Spoiler warning!
My best compliment and worst criticism of the highly acclaimed and awarded The Hunger Games trilogy is bound into one simple confession: I’m hungry for the Games.
Call me a blood-thirsty, heartless, ‘Capitolesque’ snob, but all I want are the Games. They are what is truly unique about these books. They are the driving force of plot from the very first chapter. And although we are led to believe there is a deeper issue of the Capitol’s injustice and dominion, let’s face it: that feels contrived and less significant in comparison to the Games. I think that’s why I loved the first book so much, and why I’m not alone. There are thousands of us that can say we read it in one sitting. Why? A number of reasons.
Katniss Everdeen is just plain cool. She hunts better than most dudes can, she buys, sells and trades in a black market, and her societal insights are elevated beyond that of someone her age, due in part to the horrors she has lived through – but as we know, those are just beginning for poor Katniss. When her sister Prim is nominated to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal teenage death match, she is the selfless hero who volunteers herself and simultaneously wins the heart of every reader.
Book one was such a success because the hunt begins in chapter one and never stops. It’s all real and all-consuming. Suzanne Collins suspends each chapter’s end over a cliff and forces us to dive into the next one headlong.
But for every reason that book one was a smash hit success, the other books get slightly smashed themselves.
I may be the only one, but how hard would it have been for the Capitol to arrange the death of a teenage girl who, by offering to eat some berries, began a revolution? Clean your hands of her and let the world forget she ever existed. Additionally, why would districts, who suffer under the same tyrant, war against each other in the ring? Common sense would say, “We’re not enemies. We won’t fight in your Games.” A truce of some sort would have been formed ages ago. But ok, ok, we’ll look past the two most glaring weaknesses, what else is wrong with these books?
Again, its all about the Games, so when you weaken the Games, you weaken the book. After eight chapters of absolutely nothing, the second Games finally commence. However, this time the arena feels like a painfully predictable ferris wheel that no one’s having fun on. The first arena saw spontaneously launched fireballs, ordered from the control room of a wicked gamemaker somewhere in the Capitol: cruel and believable. The second was structured… like a clock? Suddenly the Capitol’s omniscience seems weak and the entire game contrived. And don’t even get me started on the third. There is a moment when Katniss and former-victor Finnick Odair realize the nature of the Capitol’s defenses and epically announce the beginning of the next Hunger Games; only, it isn’t. It’s nothing of the sort.
Don’t get me wrong. There were some great moments. It’s just that, you would think, as time goes on, faithful followers of the Hunger Games would get more captivated, not less.
Katniss becomes a delusional girl who is more and more over her head. She loses the ability to drive any plot apart from producing propaganda, and in a last-ditch effort, Collins has her shoot the ascending President Coin. Only, Katniss lives to tell the tale, which is bizarre, and finds herself in such a state of delirium afterward that we are left desperately wishing Collins would pull out of the first person point of view so we could understand something, anything at all.
Oh Katniss, in the first book, you were my hero. But as time wore on, Collins had to keep you front and center in a plot that you didn’t fit in. So, its not your fault.
If there is a redeeming quality to the final book’s contribution to the trilogy, it is undoubtedly found at the end. The plot wraps up so perfectly, one is hard-pressed to remember the grievous elements within. Collins finds the perfect balance of increasingly-bad-guy Gale (Katniss’s long-time friend) and restored-wonder-boy Peeta (Katniss’s pretend lover). We’re comforted that Peeta will take care of her, and that Gale never could. And despite horrible losses – which are a part of real life – there is hope for recovery and restoration. Of course the Capitol falls, the Games end, and there exists nothing more to write about. Why?
Because it’s all about the Games.
The Hunger Games ★★★★★
Catching Fire ★★★
Mockingjay ★★
The Hunger Games trilogy ★★★★
