It’s no secret that the Hunger Games have swept the world. And I admit – I am way late to the bandwagon. People have been praising this series for years now. The last book has been published and devoured by the masses and I’m still trickling behind. Give a girl some credit! I can’t even watch the Rocky Horror Picture Show without getting a little squeamish. What in the world gave me the mad idea I could love these books with the rest of the world?
Set in the future, is the dystopic world of Panem, in the ruins of what once was North America. These dystopias aren't exactly uncommon in current mainstream YA, right? In a world ruled by the Capitol, an overseeing government bent on reminding its people just how very much control they have over the 12 districts, we find an annual tradition horrifyingly similar to Roman Gladiators. Each year, every district sends one male and one female as a “tribute” to fight in the Hunger Games.
That is to fight to the death. Let me rephrase that for you: 24 kids aged twelve to eighteen are sent to fight each other to the death. Did I mention that it’s on live television? For everyone to watch.
Go ahead. Pause. Let that sink in a little bit.
Katniss hails from District 12, where everybody mines coal. If it wasn’t for the hunting done by she and her best friend Gale, her family would have starved long ago. Yeah the Peace Keepers suck, but some turn a blind eye to the illegal hunting. Life is far from cozy for Katniss, and it’s due to these hardships she’s bitter as she is. And I’ll go ahead and say it – Katniss is a bitch. And you know what? I don’t mind it. It’s nice to see a kick ass heroine worried about more than shallow aspects of life: her friends, boys, who does or doesn’t like her. Singlehandedly, Katniss pulled her family out of danger and literally saved their lives.
Yeah. Her life pretty much sucks.
And it only sucks more when her sister is chosen as a tribute during the reaping. And yeah, it gets worse, when Katniss volunteers to take her sister’s place.
Now that is a display of family loyalty. Her willingness to take the place of her sister is noted as incredibly huge. Few people actually do it.
It’s so hard to write this without giving away spoilers. I’m trying, I promise.
Hunger Games is something I haven’t seen in YA fiction lately. It is gripping. I literally could not put the book down, because something inside me kept urging me to finish and get to the end. I laid in bed beside my boyfriend, using my phone for a light, because I couldn’t bear to sleep before I made it to the end. Let’s be perfectly honest here: I thought I was going to puke. It was intense, it was gritty.
The Hunger Games is wrought with tension and the pacing is perfect. Action scenes did not drag the book down, but added a heavy, terrifying impact. Kids were killing each other! And holy crap, that’s terrifying! It is survival of the fittest and wave after wave of nausea kept striking me down in my anticipation to just get to the end and see how it all pans out. Katniss had to make the kind of moral choices that would have gotten me killed. It was humanity versus survival, and finding the overlap between the two is next to impossible. This was so much worse than the kids in Lord of the Flies killing Piggy – and trust that that scarred me. I feel like the book picked me up and carried me piggy back style – because there was no other way I could have made that journey on my own.
I feel like so much of it was brilliant and, dare I say it, breath taking.
So what is it that left me so unsettled? I guess the romantic aspect just left a weird taste on my tongue. It wasn’t entirely bitter, but I certainly hadn’t just consumed the most delicious dessert in the existence of all time.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved the characters. I was fiercely fond of Katniss, who was strong and so family-oriented, and so amazing. I was crazy about Peeta who seemed too impossibly sweet for such a dangerous bloodbath. I was beyond crazy about Rue, who manage to surprise me all the while holding my hand. I even enjoyed the other tributes, one-dimensional as they are. When we see them only through the eyes of Katniss, whom is competing against them, I can’t expect to get to know them too well.
I guess I’m just torn on the romance. As a romance, it’s actually rather cute, given the circumstances. But used as a survival tactic… I guess, caught in the in between of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I’m simply teetering as Katniss is. If she doesn’t know how to feel about it, how am I supposed to? In the end, I suppose my issue stems from Katniss’s naiveté; she can read people, she can fight for her safety, yet when it comes to reading the romantic clues, she is not just blind but naïve. No, it didn’t hold up the book for me, but it was certainly an undercurrent running through my mind.
Going into this, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. A gory, horrific blood bath? A trite romance somehow set in a collosseum? And what I got was a whirlwind. A slap in the face, a shattered heart, and a sense that I might never be quite the same. At times painful, at times swoon-worthy, The Hunger Games captured my heart – and occasionally drove an arrow or two through it. But it was brilliant and fast paced! I can safely say the emotional turmoil was far from anticipated, and in the end, it left me weary.
And hungry.
You know. For the next novel.
★★★★
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