The Hunger Games Review

The Hunger Games, written by Suzanne Collins, is a young adult’s novel published in 2008. It is the first book of a science fiction trilogy by the same name. While Suzanne Collins is most well known for her work on the Hunger Games, she has also written a series of other books, which consists of Fire Proof: Shelby Woo #11 (1999), When Charlie McButton Lost Power (2005), Year of the Jungle (2013), and another series of hers, The Underland Chronicles (2003-2007). Her most popular series, The Hunger Games has been sold in 26 languages and released in over 35 territories. It has made it on the tops of the charts being declared a New York Time’s best seller, selling more than 800,000 copies. The Hunger Games has won many awards, most notably it was placed number one on Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008 and The New York Times "Notable Children's Book of 2008". It was also the 2009 winner of the Golden Duck Award in the Young Adult Fiction Category. An award winning movie based on the book was released on March 12, 2012. The film's opening weekend brought in a record of $152.5 million (USD) in North America. After reading the book myself, I would say The Hunger Games has the potential to be a interesting book due to its themes on survival and keeping your humanity while doing so, but is unfortunately not captured well enough, being over shadowed by a ridiculous teen romance and bad writing quality.


The Hunger Games takes place in a futuristic dystopian North America known as “Panem.” Established after the destruction of an unknown apocalyptic event, Panem consists of the luxurious and wealthy Capital and twelve surrounding poor districts under the Capital’s dictatorship. As a punishment for a past rebellion, in which district thirteen was destroyed, one boy and one girl from each district between the ages of twelve to eighteen are selected in an annual draw to fight to the death in an arena controlled by the Capital until only one “tribute” remains. The story is narrated by sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen, a girl from District 12 who volunteers as tribute in place of her younger sister, Primrose Everdeen. The male tribute chosen is Peeta Mellark, a baker’s son and a school mate of Katniss who had helped her once when she was dying of starvation. The popular line “May the odds be ever in your favor!” (1.8) makes it clear that the main point of the game is to survive and you want luck on your side in order to win. People want to survive because to not survive means death, and it is natural human instinct to do anything to live. To make it better, the plot develops as people die off which adds to the drama and the fact that there will only be one winner ties up the whole theme of surviving.
Peeta Mellark, on the other hand, raises up a question about humanity, another one of the themes. He says “Only I keep wishing I could think of a way to…to show the Capitol that they don't own me, that I am more than just a piece in their game.” (10.142) which brings us to the question: What is better, to survive but lose yourself, or to die but die as yourself? Unfortunately, all of these very good points were overshadowed by a silly love triangle that had no point to it. The love triangle is between the narrator Katniss Everdeen (who is pretty dense), Peeta Mellark (who has loved Katniss since he was five years old), and a third more background character Gale Hawthorne. Though Gale is rarely actually there, he is mentioned frequently by Katniss. Making him the clear third part of the love triangle which overshadowed pretty much every other part of the book. The book focuses on this romantic complication instead of talking about important things; for example, the corruption of the Panem government. Young adults do not need another romance novel; we have already gone through the Twilight by Stephenie Meyers phase, and we all know how well written and educational that book was.
One of the many problems I have with this book is that the way Suzanne Collins wrote it was as if a thirteen year old girl might have written it. She made even the dramatic or emotional scenes seem dull and monotonous. Not even the death of Rue, who was loved by many, seemed to actually hit you. Also you just couldn’t really relate to Katniss her personality was very one dimensional, as were all the characters; and she just seemed too flawless. Even the books pacing was hard to follow it was very erratic, it seem to be fast paced at some parts and then dragged along at other parts. To make it worse, the settings were not described well; readers could not just quite capture the feeling of the dystopian society.
I personally do not recommend The Hunger Games book to anyone, even though it is recommended towards my age group. It is underwritten and has few literacy devices placed into it. Although I do not think it belongs in my own age group, I would not recommend it to any age group younger because of violence and sexual themes. This book does not belong on the list of books that a high school student should have to study, with its lack of vocabulary and its exasperating first person narrative that makes it sound as if it were a girl writing in her journal. Overall, with the substandard writing style, preposterous love triangle and unappealing characters it’s safe for me to say that this book is not worth reading.