2020 EDIT: Just as amazing and powerful as the first time I read it, over ten years ago, before it became extremely popular. The colourful, urgent, fast-paced writing is absolutely topnotch, and the attention to detail concerning the worldbuilding - and the character development - is fantastic.
If anything, I understand and appreciate 'The Hunger Games' far more now than I did when I was the intended YA target audience: the relevance of the constant food imagery ('The Hunger Games' title holds many meanings), and the potent theme of the human need to survive, plus the strong overall political and cultural relevance the books hold. Poverty, classism, complacency in what's deemed mass entertainment, and power and dominance - and how the privileged wield it over others - is it all there and unmistakable. What's fake, romantic, sparkly, starry-eyed and harmless, and what's fatalism and evil manipulation; it's all part of power and control over the poor and vulnerable, through fear and denial. It is very clever and heart-wrenching. The dialogue in 'The Hunger Games' is brilliant, as well; surprisingly funny.
To be far more worldly than in my university years. This trilogy of books is as real and human as ever.
Final Score: 5/5
Original Review:
If there is one book that gives me hope for the YA demographic, one book that successfully breaks away from all the paranormal romances (translation: 'Twilight' wannabes) flooding the YA market, it's 'The Hunger Games' by Suzanne Collins.
Simply put, this is a great novel. Fun, intense, entertaining as hell, terrifying, and abundant with complex characters of all shapes and sizes; from all walks of life. Written in the present tense so that its action and suspense are urgent, it is a real harrowing experience for something marketed for young adults.
But above all, 'The Hunger Games' is a story about survival. Survival in a world so cruel and so desensitized to violence and otherworldly suffering that watching the "sport" of children killing each other brutally is a celebrated entertainment event. People cannot seem to tell the difference between reality - where death is a consequence - and fictionalized fun anymore.
For someone like me who despises reality television, it's a dystopian earth depiction that I can actually see happening. I love that this cautionary tale is being given the attention it rightly deserves.
From the first page I was hooked. Katniss Everdeen and her family are so human it's scary, and it's unfair that they live in the society they do (brilliant worldbuilding as well, I thought).
Also, Buttercup the ugly kitty - why dost Katniss not love thee?
'The Hunger Games' gives young adult books of the 21st century a good name. There is clever and even funny-because-it's-true social commentary written in here, told from the eyes of poor District 12 teenager Katniss Everdeen.
Katniss is one of my favourite literary heroines. She's strong and observant, yet flawed in her desperation to survive and to help the ones she loves. She is also noble, but has common sense. Her hunting skills are second to none - she sneaks around in the woods of her home, foraging to feed her family and herself when District 12's economy is so poor.
I cheered in chapter 2 when she volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games to save her little sister Prim from going. Prim is picked, out of hundreds of other children in District 12, from a lottery of names on the day of the "reaping". But it is Katniss who goes to the city of the Capitol, in Panem, instead. The Capitol has power over all the districts, and is run by the sinister President Snow.
Katniss will risk her life and dignity in front of the Capitol's television viewers. But just like when she lived in District 12, she won't stop trying to survive while she can.
Being in the Hunger Games as a "tribute" is considered a privilege and a chance for fame and fortune in the Capitol. But it comes with the price of either killing or being killed in the most horrific ways imaginable.
Katniss's fellow male District 12 opponent, Peeta Mellark, I once thought... okay, I'm going to become unpopular for typing this. I had thought, while reading about Peeta, that he was... a little boring. Now, before people come and attack me, I didn't not like him. He may simply have fallen into the nice boy territory that makes him come close to being bland. Or maybe that was just because we get to know him through Katniss, who is disinterested in him at first.
But that being said I did find him to be very brave and as resourceful as our heroine. And he is sweet in how he wants to protect Katniss, the girl he's liked ever since that bread-offering night when they were younger. It might not be just for show and for winning favour from the Capitol that he says he loves her. Peeta is also cunning in that regard. He definitely gets a chance to be more interesting and complex in the sequels; winning him further respect from me. So it becomes convincing that a cynical girl like Katniss would grow to love him too.
Another win for 'The Hunger Games' for me is that the romance is downplayed, and so is the love triangle - the one between Katniss, her District 12 hunting friend Gale, and Peeta. After all, in a world like the one the book is set in, why would anyone care about that, other than the Panem citizens who love drama? There is so much important else going on that if a shallow romance with no growth or depth were to become the book's main focus, it'll ruin the sincerity of the setting and the cautionary tale Ms Collins intended by writing this trilogy of YA novels.
Brilliant, heart-pumping, human and a shocking tear-jerker, 'The Hunger Games' was hyped, and still is, for good reason. It's not only to be read for fun, it's an important story for teenagers, and for adults.
Final Score: 5/5. What are you waiting for if you haven't read it yet?
P.S. I do not care for the term "rip-off" when comparing 'The Hunger Games' to another book. That book is 'Battle Royale', which I haven't read and due to the repeated comparisons and near-aggressive claims that it's "better" than the "rip-off", I don't want to read it any time soon. Every individual work of art/fiction should be judged in its own right and for its own merits. Constantly comparing it to something else is unfair criticism.
Quotes:
'Winning will make you famous. Losing means certain death.'
"Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favour!"
"Look how we take your children and sacrifice them and there's nothing you can do. If you lift a finger, we will destroy every last one of you. Just as we did in District Thirteen." - Page 22
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