An amazing trilogy by Suzanne Collins set in a post apocalyptic world where humans have been reduced to a single city state "The Capitol" and twelve slave "Districts". Capitols control over technology and more importantly communications lets it completely control the districts, going as far as to running an annual "hunger games". Hunger games are like The Survivor, but you die instead of just being voted out, and the players are picked from the children of the districts. The control of the Capitol is so complete that not only are districts forced to send their children to death year after year, but they are also forced to celebrate the games.
The premise of the book is horrifying, and as I started reading it I kept feeling that this is crazy, something like that can never happen. But in a surprisingly little time I found myself engrossed in the games, cheering some contestants, wishing death of others. On one hand, the book is clearly a work of fiction, there is no way something like that can ever happen in our world, but in other ways it hit close to home. One poignant scene is when a district child is in the capitol, and looks at a typical meal that is served - some meat, some cheese, some wine, some cake. He tallies in his head how long it will take someone to prepare a meal like that in his district. Hunt enough meat. Save enough meat so that you can trade some for cheese. A months salary for the wine. Probably 2 months worth of hunting to get enough money to trade for the cake. But that is not that far from the disparity in our world, just like that Hunger Games is a story of our world.
And that is the beauty of the books. Even with an outlandish setting far from anything that you can remotely identify with, they remain realistic and you cannot help getting emotionally involved with the characters. Even the people of the Capitol, you can almost feel some sympathy for them. They do horrible things, but they are as much a slave of the culture that they live in that it is really as heroic for them to stand against it, as it is for the people in the districts. For those who do not have the courage to fight, you can only be as unsympathetic for those in capitols as you are for those in the districts.
There were a few low spots, more like the nitpicking of a grouchy old man. I found the ending to be too fantastic even for the setting, and unsatisfying. The last book steadily climbs to a climax, and then in a style very reminiscent of Lord of The Rings, instead ending the story, says a slow good by to the reader rather than an abrupt adieu. While I loved the Lord of The Ring for that, here it just left me baffled. I thought it would have been better to have more narrative voices. You are on the edge of your seat wondering if your favorite character will live or die, and then you realize that the same character is narrating the story, so she must have lived though at least this scene.
Overall, highly recommended. All three books end with the closure of the plot, so you do not have to read the next one.
The premise of the book is horrifying, and as I started reading it I kept feeling that this is crazy, something like that can never happen. But in a surprisingly little time I found myself engrossed in the games, cheering some contestants, wishing death of others. On one hand, the book is clearly a work of fiction, there is no way something like that can ever happen in our world, but in other ways it hit close to home. One poignant scene is when a district child is in the capitol, and looks at a typical meal that is served - some meat, some cheese, some wine, some cake. He tallies in his head how long it will take someone to prepare a meal like that in his district. Hunt enough meat. Save enough meat so that you can trade some for cheese. A months salary for the wine. Probably 2 months worth of hunting to get enough money to trade for the cake. But that is not that far from the disparity in our world, just like that Hunger Games is a story of our world.
And that is the beauty of the books. Even with an outlandish setting far from anything that you can remotely identify with, they remain realistic and you cannot help getting emotionally involved with the characters. Even the people of the Capitol, you can almost feel some sympathy for them. They do horrible things, but they are as much a slave of the culture that they live in that it is really as heroic for them to stand against it, as it is for the people in the districts. For those who do not have the courage to fight, you can only be as unsympathetic for those in capitols as you are for those in the districts.
There were a few low spots, more like the nitpicking of a grouchy old man. I found the ending to be too fantastic even for the setting, and unsatisfying. The last book steadily climbs to a climax, and then in a style very reminiscent of Lord of The Rings, instead ending the story, says a slow good by to the reader rather than an abrupt adieu. While I loved the Lord of The Ring for that, here it just left me baffled. I thought it would have been better to have more narrative voices. You are on the edge of your seat wondering if your favorite character will live or die, and then you realize that the same character is narrating the story, so she must have lived though at least this scene.
Overall, highly recommended. All three books end with the closure of the plot, so you do not have to read the next one.