The Hunger Games, a modern fantasy novel which I think deserves to become a classic. It was sculpted in sand as part of the Sand Sculpture Exhibition in Weston-super-Mare…
I read the three novels of the trilogy and thoroughly enjoyed them although I did have a bit of a quibble over certain aspects of the last part; it was purely my own view and in no way reflected on the overall excellence of the three novels. I have shared below a previous post I wrote about the books; having read the first volume as part of my book club ‘read’ I just had to get the two subsequent volumes to find out what happened next!
The Hunger Games is a trilogy by the author Suzanne Collins, and much as I ma prejudiced against the use of the present tense, her books are the very few where I think it effective and works and does not just seem like a silly, fashionable device.
http://loiselden.com/2013/08/28/narrative-in-the-present-tense/
The three stories are set in the future, a dark, dangerous and very frightening future, where the population of a decimated North America is controlled by using an annual games, similar to the Roman circuses; two young people from each of the districts are chosen to enter a vast arena where, televised to the nation, they have to fight each other to the death… it sounds grim and horrific, and in a way it is, but at the same time the situation has a frightening believability as ‘reality’ television becomes more and more extreme in what it asks/forces competitors to do.
The first novel of the series, introduces Katniss Everden the heroine who takes the place of her sister in the games and finds herself fighting, and killing the other competitors from the other districts, as well as the boy competitor from her own, Peeta. It sounds horrific, and it is, but it is also a great narrative, believable characters, twists and turns in the plot and a very unexpected outcome. I was utterly gripped by it, and found it had a grim warning for the future, where the population is brutally controlled in a distorted effort to manage famine, war, and poverty by oppression and terror… a very grim warning.
The second two novels follow Katniss as she continues to fight, not just for her own life and that of her family but to fight for freedom. I think for young readers it would give an accessible way of debating the issues which confront us, the young people who will have to take on these world problems.
The first novel of the trilogy was published in 2008 and immediately and rightly became a best seller and has been made into a film; ‘Catching Fire’ and ‘Mockingjay’ the second and third parts were published in 2009 and 2012.
I thoroughly ‘enjoyed’ the first book… enjoy is maybe not the right word as the story line is about young people fighting for survival against cruel and unbalanced odds; the second novel I also enjoyed although I found the end of it seemed rushed, as if the writer wanted to move the plot along quickly so she could start the third and final part. I have now finished the third and final part, and it really did not grip me as the others had, there seemed too much repetition of fight scenes, and although the whole thing is implausible, up till then I had been carried along by the books own internal rational… this began to fail for me in the third part. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t read it, but it just didn’t seem believable that a seventeen year old girl would be sent on such dangerous missions with trained and professional soldiers… and in the end I didn’t care for the characters as I had at first. My last criticism, and it is a very personal thing, I thought the epilogue was unnecessary, I would have liked to have had my own idea of what happened in Katniss’s future, and the ‘soft’ view of it from the author seemed to dampen down the climax… but that is only my point of view.
The Hunger Games is a great trilogy and I hope it encourages young people to get into reading… and maybe even writing!
http://loiselden.com/2012/11/21/the-hunger-games/
http://loiselden.com/2013/06/02/i-caugth-fire-now-onto-mockinjay/
http://loiselden.com/2013/06/07/mockinjay/
http://loiselden.com/2012/12/01/catching-fire/
Lois Elsden 