The Mostly Death and Kinda Hunger Games

Somewhere down the line I managed to get to reading the entire Hunger Games Trilogy. A series that caught fire after the inception of the movie based on the first book. Unfortunately I had finished the first two books rather quickly and then only recently in the past few days managed to complete the third book. This was largely due to the end of the second book tearing me away from the series and frustrating me.

Most people know the basics of the first novel in the series, so I won’t give a summary of that. Instead I will mention that out of all three books, the first one is honestly the only one that deserves to be a movie, and even then you miss a lot of important details in the movie that were in the book, like Katniss’ struggle around her romance with Peeta. This first novel was absolutely complete and a beautiful story that didn’t need further works placed on it. It managed to conclude its entire story all in one go.

Unfortunately Suzanne Collins felt it was necessary to add on two additional books that might as well have been one. The second tale goes on the premise that now that Katniss (the main character) had won the games (in the first book) she would have to mentor the female tribute from her district for all future hunger games. However it is then revealed a new rule for just that game year would be put in place to where they would draw from the previous victors for the new games. This meant Katniss was automatically in the games again.

Honestly it was a well done premise and interesting. The beginning goes wonderfully; it is when everything during the games blows up in Katniss’ face that the plot does too. We are left with giant holes in the plot that had been started with this book and left on massive cliffhangers, which I absolutely despise. I have no problems with cliffhangers in books, or cliffhangers at the end, so long as everything that was your plot in that book actually has a conclusion. Instead we end the second book with about a hundred things tacked on that you find out and no idea where to go from there.

Those kinds of breaks in the plot completely destroy my want to read a book, which is the reason it took so long for me to get around to the third book. This one managed to sum up the rest of the plot well, except once again near the end, as a giant war is coming to a close that will change the fate of Panem (the world), we find ourselves mixed up in Katniss’ confusion and although I enjoyed her rebellion that I had wanted to see in the first book, we end up with a strange way of ending the novel. I don’t want to give away so much, but essentially all that work to fight against society and to not do what the Hunger Games staff wanted her to, resulted in her still ending up doing what they all wanted.

It was disappointing, and I had mentioned before with a previous work how I dislike hidden messages in stories that mention things like ‘No matter how hard you try, you cannot win against society’.  But then again, at least the messages in it weren’t as bad as the ones you find in Twilight, which the two of these could largely be placed into the same category, with hunger games actually being a worthwhile book to read.

Twilight I wouldn’t recommend to anyone, but Hunger Games I would at least recommend reading the first book for, even if you had already seen the movie. If you have read or seen the first book/movie and you enjoyed it, then you should definitely pick up the rest. As for anyone else, if you enjoy dystopias or novels with a focus on the future of earth or enjoy military pieces then the entire series is definitely something you should look into.

I want to mention, although this particular piece was quite negative, it was because there wasn’t as much to say about the positive aspects of these books. There were plenty to be found, like the characters in the books are well done and interesting, which is crucial. Unfortunately the plot is the most important in a book, with characters next and then the rest of it. Also, be ready to see plenty of death, because as I mentioned in the title this series is full of death and hardly any hunger, especially in the third book.

Random Jordan is a self-proclaimed faerie tale savant and frequent writer of all fashion of fiction with a particular focus of weaving LGBT themes into stories of old, like their most recent series, Beyond Ever After, following Red Riding Hood twenty years after her encounter with the Big Bad Wolf.