Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Over the past few weeks I’ve found myself becoming hyper-critical of books I’ve been reading, even while I enjoyed the stories and admired the talent of the author. As a result of the editing process I’ve undergone with my own book, I have found it hard to “lose myself” in the narrative of a story. Early in “The Hunger Games” I struggled with the author’s habit of contracting “is” with a variety of nouns; I was searching for flaws. Thankfully, that didn’t last.

By the seventh chapter I was hooked and whatever quibbles I may have had disappeared as a fascinating, troubled future formed from the words in my Kindle. While the seeds of this story may have come from television’s “Survivor” and “American Idol”, combined with a variety of apocalyptic movies including “Thunderdome”, the real and gritty humanity that Collins draws from her characters makes any comparison worthless. The first book leaves me eager to get into the second and see how Kat, Gale, Peetna and the rest of the engrossing cast fare in a country that seems primed for revolution.

View all my reviews