Spoilery Book Reviews

The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

My thoughts

These books start with very simplistic language, short sentences that almost feel staccato. This does not diminish the reading experience, makes the book feel very direct instead of meandering. Within this writing style the descriptions are still impactful and a connection to the characters is done very well.

The first book of this series is my favourite, for the introduction to the dystopian concepts, Katniss's survival of the games and the questions the relationship with Peeta raises. Katniss's character felt very strong throughout the series, her good and bad qualities never changing. She continued to be selfishly focussed on her own survival first, blocking out greater emotional pains and requiring conscious attention to contemplate emotionally challenging things or consider other's feelings. I love the moral grey line that this sometimes toes, that Katniss is a cold-hearted and selfish bitch at times, for always putting her own survival first, just doing the best with the skillset she has. While some main characters are left as a greater 'blank canvas' for an assumed self-insert, Katniss's character was bold and felt distinct.

Catching Fire felt strongest while again, the games were on. That type of action and moment-to-moment survival is Collins' strong point in writing. The latter half of Mockingjay...I'll get to that. I love the way Katniss falls in love. Her emotions felt so raw and real, in that not everything is in black and white. That you can love and care for someone deeply, without it necessarily falling into romantic love, but accepting that it has the possibility to. I've read a lot of attempted love triangles, and I don't like calling this a love triangle because it felt atypical, but the basics were there. Katniss cares deeply for both Gale and Peeta, without knowing how to draw the line between caring and love.

Upon careful reflection, Mockingjay is a poorly written book. Overall I highly rate this series, but now that I have a critical eye, I see problems.

Katniss spends a lot of her time dazed and confused, avoiding participating in her life and consequently, the war effort. On one level, this makes sense since she is a young woman/teenager and has gone through some very traumatic experiences. As someone invested in the mounting tensions of the political and literal war being waged, it was lazy writing. Collins was able to skip over writing a lot of the detail that goes into waging a war by participating in Katniss's limited POV, and making Katniss be super uninvolved most of the time.

There are small segments of direct action in Mockingjay, but large portions we are told of events instead of living through them. In Hunger Games, sorting out Peeta's wounds was a very detailed event. In Mockingjay, putting sutures in a dire wound on Gale's neck was a one-sentence affair.

After the bombs kill Prim, the whole story devolves into Katniss wandering, so Collins can avoid writing about how a messy war is won. Then with a few disconnected vague sentences Katniss has overheard, she decides to kill President Coin and more disoriented wandering, solitary confinement ensues. The author just killing time until it seemed appropriate that all the nitty gritty details have been fixed and Katniss can be deposited in her epilogue.

The epilogue was equally disappointing. I understand the characters have been through some very bad traumas, which was how I used to rationalise the ending, but now I find it lacklustre and rushed. We spend the first two books falling in love with Peeta, a fact Katniss tries to ignore in the third book, then we get a three sentence summarisation of how they found their way back into a relationship. Also Katniss having kids seems far from a happy ending since she stated she never wanted children. I know that her reasoning was about the games, which are now over, but the trauma and fear is still there. It would have been nice to have a happy ending minus children.

Overall I enjoy this series, especially the way it makes you connect to the characters, and then kills them off. The themes it explores are very important to consider, especially coming from a white, western country of privilege. With the climate crisis worsening I can't help but draw parallels between western societies and the Capitol. While some people complain "oh no I can't buy lettuce" a few million people elsewhere are homeless due to flooding.

One other random note: this book used kilos a heap of times?? The story is written by an American author set in the dystopian ruins of America and used the metric system casually. It took me this long to notice this detail because kilos made perfect sense to me until I thought harder about the background of where this book comes from.

TL:DR

A great trilogy, many painful characters deaths, lazy writing to overcome specific details of the politics surrounding war.