Book Review: The Hunger Games

Let me first of all establish that I never expected to read this book. Ever. I don't like books about the future and I figured this was some kind of dirty YA book. But I was tired of the book I was reading and I wanted something exciting and nitty-gritty and two of my friends had highly recommended it so The Hunger Games seemed to fit my momentary kinks and off to the library I went.
And, since reading it was a surprise, the fact that I'm actually writing a review about it is even more astonishing, especially since I stink at writing them. Practice makes perfect, so I guess I'll be trying to do more of them in the future. It's sort of a New Year's resolution - though I don't make those either.

Anyway, with the fact that I never expected to read it established, we can now move on.

Summary:
The book is - literally - about killing people. Nice cheery thought, eh? That's what I thought.  For a basic summary:
The Capitol of the country of Panem (which used to be the U.S.) keeps its twelve outlying districts in line (after a rebellion) by holding an annual event called a Hunger Game. Basically, every district is subject every year to a "reaping" where two children - between the ages of 12 and 18 - are randomly chosen to be "tributes" and sent to a specially prepared arena to fight the other 23 until there is only one left. And this is nationally televised and properly hyped. Gruesome, I know.
District 12 (one of the poorest of the twelve) is where Katniss Everdeen lives. She's a hunter and struggles to keep her mother and younger sister alive by the game she shoots with her bow and arrow in the forbidden forests near their home.
At this reaping, Katniss's twelve-year-old sister is chosen to be a tribute. Immediately, Katniss volunteers to go in her place. And opposite her, a young man named Peeta Mellark is chosen.
They travel to the Capitol, train, interview and try to gain sponsers (who will send them gifts while they struggle to win in the arena) and then they're tossed, weaponless, into the arena to fight it out.


Plot: This book is quite fast-paced and, due to its subject matter, very suspenseful and exciting. The beginning, though, is rather slow and choppy. I found myself raising my eyebrows at the dialogue and wondering when the story would start to pick up. It has a feel to it that the author sat down, wrote it out, and then published it.
But when the plot picked up, it really picked up. I never could quite settle in and say, "all right, now I know how this is going to end" because every time I said that, the plot would twist a little (or a lot) and the story would pick up and race ahead. Even the ending gives you no mercy.
I guess that's what I liked the most about the book. It was stymieingly clever. Katniss is a very incredible, resourceful girl and the way she handles problems and the way Ms. Collins weaves the rules of the Games and the different aspects of survival are not cliche.
Although it was interesting, The Hunger Games is also rather gory and intense. I mean, its like the Olympics except that everyone but the gold medalist dies. It has an extra edge of intensity because of that aspect. You root, obviously, for Katniss, but it's morbid to think of what the consequences of rooting for her are. Twenty-three young human beings have to die for her to win - including the young man that came with her and the younger tributes who were chosen. They're not real, I know, but in the book's dimensions they are and it's sobering to realize what is at stake.  

Characters: For the most part, I tried, really tried, not to like any of the characters because I knew from reading the back of the book that 90% of them wouldn't make it to the last page.
Whoopee.
I couldn't help liking Katniss and I figured it wouldn't hurt because since there are two more books in the series, her chances of survival were pretty good. And even though she's a survivor and quite clever and talented, she's also human enough that you don't hold her abilities against her. I admired her guts and her will to survive.
Peeta Mellark, the other tribute from District 12 is a nice guy. You can't help liking him (despite a few unfortunate instances where Ms. Collin's editor could have been a little more alert) and hoping that somehow, someway - especially as his friendship with Katniss grows - there will be some lenience so that Katniss doesn't have to kill him to win the Games - or that he doesn't have to kill Katniss to win them either.
And then there's Rue. You like her as soon as she's introduced, but I steeled myself because I didn't want to lose her. But I finally gave in and it was all right.
And then there's Haymitch. I liked him - and was justified in my decision.
And then there was the supporting cast - which I won't go into - but it was hard to let yourself like them too, because there was always the fact that they would probably be dead in the next chapter.
All in all, the characters were interesting and not cardboard cut-outs. It just really stunk that I couldn't like them like I usually would.
That's the price you pay, I guess, for reading the book.

Likes: I already shared my biggest like: the cleverness of the plot, but there are more.
- I liked the fact that although Katniss and Peeta were tossed into a dog-eat-dog form of survival, they still struggled to keep their humanity. In the sort of story where you expect the characters to check their morals outside the door, they don't. This book, which very much surprised me, is clean. Even though Katniss and Peeta are forced to play a star-crossed romance to get sponsorship, they don't cross any strict moral lines. The most they share is a romantic kiss. And there are no swear words either. For YA, it's pretty good (if you can get past the fact that the whole book is based on killing people).
- The dialogue (which is tremendously important to me) was - for the most part - good. It didn't drag, it wasn't tacky, it didn't get overlong, and Katniss was sarcastic - which is always a big plus. Sarcasm is the best way to have good dialogue.
- The suspense. It's hard to get bored with a book when you know that at any moment someone could jump out in front of your heroine and engage in her in some sort of battle. And the fact that there can only be one person remaining to end the Games made it doubly suspenseful. Besides that, there were enough twists in the plot to make you doubt any of your comforting, preconceived ideas about how the storyline would go. Alliances crumble as time goes on, enemies turn into friends (which is the worst possible thing that can happen, because you know that eventually one of them is going to have to kill the other), and situations shift from safe to deadly in the matter of a few seconds.
If you want excitement - you've come to the right place.  

Dislikes: There were, as always in any book, several flaws. Most obvious in this book is the beginning. It's clunky and doesn't really catch your interest and there are several lamentable bits of dialogue and description that made me seriously consider disliking it. Persevere, though. It gets better.
And the whole fact that the plot revolves around killing people can turn some readers off. As for me, I love books where people die, so I didn't mind, but I know some a lot of people who would.
I wasn't too keen on some aspects of The Capitol either. People with strangely colored skin don't get much ovation from me.

Conclusion: To finish off, I really enjoyed The Hunger Games but it's not a book I would recommend to anyone verbally. I've tried to be as clear about my feelings in this review as I could, but, as I said before, I'm not good at writing these and I've probably left you all somewhere in the middle in a muddle. My advice would be not to read it if you don't like death and the idea of reading it makes you uncomfortable. But for those of you who are interested in morbid things (like I am... :D) then you really should give it a try. The only offensive thing about it is the plot and if you can handle that, then it's clean and you won't have to skip over an icky romance scene that you didn't know was there and didn't want to read.

Till next time!