inverarity: (inverarity)
Hunger Games Adventures


So, I actually liked The Hunger Games. It's a YA dystopian series, emphasis on dystopian, and I don't really blame it for kicking off the weak YA "dystopian" fad that followed, with "dystopian" societies based on vampire breeding farms, Hogwarts-esque caste systems, creepy harem-proms, or societies run by eHarmony.

But, as flawed and watered-down as Hunger Games was for its YA audience, the compelling and horrific part for me was that Suzanne Collins never let you forget that we're reading about children being forced to kill other children for the entertainment of the elite and the oppression and terrorization of the masses.

Nuclear War

Of course the entertainment industry is what it is, so we got the Hunger Games boardgame (now you too can be a teenager hunting down and killing your fellow teens!), which I can only laugh at ironically. It's not like I don't appreciate the dark humor — it's no darker, when you think about it, than Zombie dice, and I still have my copy of Nuclear War. ("I need to make change for 25 million...")

But seeing Facebook ads for "the adventures of Johanna" (you know, the psycho axe-killer) that take you to this cute little "social media game" where you wander around collecting food and energy and talking to people... Hmm, so I guess you don't butcher your fellow Hunger Games contestants?

Adventure with Johanna!

I'm not moralizing, though I guess I am being a bit of a grump about the chipper cartoonish blunting of what little edge this series had.

I'd be less annoyed by a game based on Battle Royale or The Running Man (Stephen King's original novel, not the stupid Schwarzenegger movie) that was up front about the fact that it's a bloodbath.
inverarity: (Default)
The song playing during the closing credits of The Hunger Games was haunting and eerie, but I could barely make out the lyrics.

Turns out it is Abraham's Daughter by Arcade Fire, and once you know the lyrics, well, it wouldn't be a bad theme song for someone else's closing credits, would it?

inverarity: (Default)
The song playing during the closing credits of The Hunger Games was haunting and eerie, but I could barely make out the lyrics.

Turns out it is Abraham's Daughter by Arcade Fire, and once you know the lyrics, well, it wouldn't be a bad theme song for someone else's closing credits, would it?

inverarity: (Default)


So this will probably be like Mockingjay review bajillion-and-three this week. No spoilers in my review (but I'm going to assume that spoilers are fair game in comments).

I liked The Hunger Games very much, so much that I blazed through Catching Fire, and found book two mildly disappointing. It was the usual middle-of-the-series slump, where there wasn't really a whole lot of new stuff happening, nor any real forward momentum or character development, although the story was entertaining enough.

Still, there hasn't been a book that made me sit down and read it, needing to finish it and know what happens, since I read the entire Harry Potter series over the course of a month several years ago. (I had never read any of the books until Deathly Hallows came out.)

I was feeling pretty smug about predicting what was going to happen (and a bit annoyed at some of the predictability and recycled ideas from the first two books), and then in the last third of the book, Collins suddenly pulled it off. This strangely-compelling series rose about the level of "pretty good for YA" and became an epic story fit for grown-ups.

Collins did a better job than Rowling did ending her series. Where Rowling pulled her punches and gave us a squeaky-clean happily-ever-after ending, Collins wasn't afraid to deliver a gut punch or two, and she doesn't let her protagonists off easy. The world may be better off than it was in the beginning, but it (and the surviving characters) are still damaged and scarred. I've got respect for a writer who's not afraid to knife her babies, 'cause that's the kind of writer I am...

There are still things that annoyed me about the book because of its YA-ness ("here's another bright and shiny plot device I pulled out of my ass to drop in the middle of the story" and total military/strategic!fail when it came to the whole war against the Capitol), but it redeemed itself with the ending.

Even though I totally guessed wrong about who Katniss would end up with.

I'd be annoyed about that, too (because if you'd told me the ending before I read it, I would have said "Fail! Completely goes against established characterization"), except that the way Collins worked it out, it actually ended up making sense.
inverarity: (Default)
I had misgivings about reading The Hunger Games. I find YA novels to be more hit-or-miss than most of what I read -- there is some YA fiction I quite like, but it has to be really good for me not to find it juvenile and a waste of my time. So I usually don't pick up the latest hot thing in YA fiction, even if it doesn't involve vampires. (I ignored Harry Potter for years, and only started reading the books after the last one was published.)

The marketing didn't help. (Hint to publishers: while I understand that the teenage girl market is very important to the success of any YA fiction novel, "If you like Twilight, you'll love this..." is not an endorsement for many people who might otherwise buy the book.)

The Hunger Games and Twilight are both YA novels with a teenage girl protagonist. That's pretty much the only thing they have in common.

I loved this book. It's not perfect; I'll discuss its flaws below. I won't call it the greatest thing since Harry Potter. (Then again, I loved Harry Potter but can rant at length about the flaws in that series.) I like a lot of books. I even like some really crappy books. So the fact that I love a book doesn't necessarily mean it's a great work of literature. But the books I love are the ones that stick with me after I put them down, and leave me with a sense of unresolved issues, righteous indignation at the characters' dilemma, and a genuine concern for what happens to them. And I wanted to know what's going to happen next to poor Katniss Everdeen so much that I've already begun reading the sequel, Catching Fire



Review of The Hunger Games )

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