(Note to those interested in reading this book: there will be minor spoilers in this review. Nothing that should ruin the book for you or take away from the many twists and turns the plot takes, but if you want to go into it unknowing, I suggest you stop here and come back to this review once you've read the book for yourself. Thanks - S)
The Hunger Games is the first in a trilogy of dystopian fiction novels set in a ravaged, futuristic version of America known as Panem. The country has been divided into twelve districts, each specifically tasked with providing a certain good or service to the Capital, where the country's dictatorial leaders and wealthiest citizens live. Many years before, the districts tried to rebel against the Capital, led by a thirteenth district that was subsequently wiped off the map when the Capital put down the uprising. And now, as continued punishment for that rebellion, along with a number of other hardships, each of the twelve districts are forced, every year, to randomly choose one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a free-for-all battle to the death that takes place on live television, with everyone forced to watch and celebrate.
The main character in this story is a sixteen-year-old girl named Katniss Everdeen who ends up volunteering for the Hunger Games when her twelve-year-old sister Prim is chosen. The story is told in the first person, so you learn a lot about Katniss's personality from the very start, and you experience the horrors and tragedy of the world she lives in firsthand.
The story is made even more gripping and personal because Katniss's fellow tribute from her district, a baker's son named Peeta Mellark, is a person with whom she has a complicated history, most of it unknown even to her. I think, no matter how many times I read this book, the most heartbreaking part of it is the way that the love story unfolds between Katniss and Peeta. You see everything from Katniss's perspective, of course, but her description of Peeta's words and actions, divorced from her belief that everything he does is in furtherance of his own victory in the Hunger Games, are enough to tell anyone who's been in love before that he really does love her. He's been put in this horrible, impossible position that any person with a heart should want to do everything possible to save him from, and he's manipulated into using that love in furtherance of her survival when she doesn't return it.
The love story aside, though, this book is an amazing yet difficult read. When explaining to someone today that I was so on edge because I was about to finish the book (for the second time, I might add), I said that the story "hits my brain like lightning." It's not just that I can't put it down; even though I know how the book ends, reading it sets my every nerve ending on fire. I have dreams about it, it distracts most of my waking thoughts, and once I am finished with it, all I can think of is racing through the other two books so I can get the whole story out of my system and get my brain back to normal. Even sitting here, writing this review, I am jittering with nerves just thinking about the plot and about what I know comes next.
This book is both a hard and an easy read, and I am willing to bet that it's not for everyone, but it will make you cry, make you angry, make you think, and make you believe in both the best and the worst of people. I could write an essay on my thoughts about any society that could allow something like the Hunger Games to even take place--and probably will at some point--but for now, I think I will just encourage you to read the book and join me in crossing my fingers and hoping that the movie will be just as good. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a sequel to go read...
The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins
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