A few reviewers said the movie wasn’t as great as it could be, so I passed and decided to wait for the DVD release. However, a couple of weeks ago I was trawling for a good book and I thought: Hunger Games, why not? I’m currently writing my own YA book and I thought that I should be pragmatic and check out the competition. I didn’t expect it to be good, I certainly expect it to be great. It was just the new Twilight that I had to read because the world demanded it.
COVER
The cover for the Kindle version I purchased is the movie tie-in edition. I’m not sure what to think of that. I know that keeping your marketing material the same is a good idea, but would it be such an ask to have a unique Kindle cover that really takes advantage of its grey scale processing? We’re not talking a single independent writer here, this is a professional squad. Surely they could design something that grabs you straight off from the get go.
The cover itself is fine. It’s Katniss’ mockingbird on fire and I already knew it looked great in print at the local bookshop. In greyscale, however, not so much. All the vividness and contrast has been drained out of the picture; therefore, even though it’s in super high definition, it doesn’t grab me on the Kindle.
It’s also strange that the cover suffers from the ‘blank space’ issue a lot of books have around its left and right sides. I went off at Alan Parr last week about and I haven’t changed my opinion. This is really lazy work and whoever put the book together for the Kindle should be spoken to about it. Yes, they would have to modify the file but it would be worth it.
BOOK LAYOUT
Even though the book still starts right into the novel (please, can we not do that?), I found it had all the essentials: TOC, chapter headings, acknowledgments and a really great way of promoting the next book. Unfortunately, I’m not a huge fan of the way the TOC had been laid out and although I understand it’s not the Kindle version creator’s fault (because he / she was staying true to the source material) it really reeks of sloppiness.
I can comprehend that fans of the novel would want it changed as little as possible from one version to another, but I’m not sure they would complain about aesthetic changes like chapter headings. I say this because the TOC chapter listings are 1, 2, 3 and so on. It works when you create a printed book because you can make those numbers really large but as TOC headings, it looks like an eighth grader put the table of contents together. Surely they could have changed them to One, Two, Three and kept the spirit of the book.
One thing I love about the layout is their marketing. At the very end of the novel is a picture promoting the new novel: Catching Fire, and it’s great. It let’s you know that the other book is available, what it’s called and it’s not trying to force you to read anymore. I’m already thinking for picking it up in the Christmas period (or when I have holidays) to add to my list of reading material.
STORY
The story is pretty well known by now: Katniss has voluntarily put herself forward to compete in the Hunger Games so that she can save her sister from a likely death. This games are a survival tournament between the 12 different districts that is held in the Capitol and features participants from the ages of 13 (?) to 18.
The main story: survival, is added to with the possibility of romance, audience manipulation and defiance against an oppressive regime. I loved it. I really loved it. The story arc is tightly wound and just goes up and up in its tension as the book progresses.
I found Suzanne Collins totally ruthless as an author (for this kind of book she needs to be) and that was overwhelmingly refreshing for me as a reader. No-one is spared. Friendships are made because of the need to survive and then characters are dispatched as if the Hunger Games was happening in reality right now. There’s no sentimentality in this book or inauthentic moments and that’s what makes the story work because it feels as if you’re right there every step of the way with Katniss and the other competitors.
Also, the book ends. The Hunger Games end and that makes it a compelling (and fulfilling) read.
CHARACTERS
It’s been a long time since I’ve read characters who I’ve cared about so deeply. I love Katniss and her strength, her confusion, her struggle with humanity versus survival. It’s powerful, it’s evocative and it made my heart jump more than once. She’s a character that hasn’t just turned up with a bow because that’s what the author wants, she’s a character who grew to use a bow because of her fierce determination to survive. I feel that things are going to go badly for her in the next two novels but you can’t help but hope she makes it somehow.
There’s a great mentor in Haymitch who I hope will be fleshed out more in the second book, a complex and volatile love interest in Peeta, an uncertain ally in Cinna and a fascinating interviewer in Caesar. I think what I loved about all these characters was the fact that they arrive as real people. They have histories, secrets and their own goals Suzanne hasn’t told us about yet. Nothing feels deliberately hidden in the book but you can feel it lurking beneath the surface and just waiting to explode.
I think Cinna was probably my favourite outside of Katniss and I’m looking forward to seeing if he gets more space in the next novel.
WRITING
Wow. This is incredibly written. The end of the book says that Suzanne Collins explores the effects of war in her novels and you can feel that. She writes with a purpose and drive that I did not feel in Twilight or Switched. Everything feels stripped back, every word feels as if it should belong on the page and there’s no fancy literary games to be played with the author. I felt as if Katniss was speaking to me directly all the way through.
It’s written in the first person perspective and in the present tense. I think the narrator is a little unreliable (she’s only 18) but has a unique and strong voice that you can hear in each sentence on the page. After reading the big ones: Switched and Twilight, I’m pretty comfortable saying this is in a whole different league. There was nothing wrong with Stephanie Meyer or Amanda Hocking’s writing ability in those books, but they were not at this level. Not this gripping, not with this strength of tone and force behind each word. It was like being kicked in the teeth and then pulled behind a chariot for three thousand metres.
CONCLUSION
Is it worth? Yes. Hell yes.
I can’t tell you how much of a relief it was for me to read Hunger Games. I really struggled through the last two books and thought that maybe I had lost my ability to enjoy well written novels because I was writing more myself. I wasn’t. The last two books just weren’t that good.
Hunger Games grabbed me from the first page and held me until its bittersweet end. I started it at ten o’clock at night and finished the novel the next morning. It’s about 80,000 words but it didn’t feel like it. It felt so much smaller than the other two novels I had just read. I loved Hunger Games and it made me believe that there was some more Young Adult fiction out there for me.
You don’t need to like YA to enjoy Hunger Games, you don’t need to like vampires, love torn women or any of the tropes of the genre. This is fiction at its finest with an immediacy that would have made George Orwell proud.