Friday, October 28, 2011

The Hunger Games: Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games; Suzanne Collins; Young Adult, 374p

I read this book basically in one day and then started the second one as soon as possible, so my thoughts on this series are kind of blurred together. An excellent post-apocalyptic dystopian tale, plus some rather drippy teenage love triangle nonsense, but it's not NEARLY as bad as some other series I could mention, like Twilight, namely because Katniss, the main character, is so focused on the survival of herself and her family that she just does not have time to think about romance. Which is fantastic. She's much more of a role model for readers than, again, some other protagonists, but I'm not here to rant about how S. Meyer has pretty much glorified abusive relationships and set feminism back about fifty years.
Suzanne Collins, on the other hand, writes a very neat, tightly-paced adventure, and even though the plot twists (everything is horrible and it only gets more horrible!) are fairly predictable for the genre, they're carried off well, and The Hunger Games is a terribly engaging read. Also: It's REALLY GORY. A lot more gory than I was expecting from something YA! This was a pleasant surprise, actually, it makes the stream-of-consciousness narration from Katniss really pop.
I will continue this, with further thoughts, in my review of the second book. which should be posted in about fifteen minutes.

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