My Goodreads review- The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I'm not sure if I should give this book a 2 or a 3. I feel like I should give it a 2.5.
I know a LOT of people love this book, and because of that I wanted to give it a try even after watching and hating the movie. Now, I had some personal reasons for hating the movie that aren't entirely relevant (if you're about to head into remote wilderness for weeks to do something that you're afraid is going to get you killed this time, the Hunger Games is not the right movie to watch right before). But I didn't want to let a bad movie adaptation make it so that I didn't read the book, assuming that there was something in the book that I was missing that made it so wonderful.
And I did like the book way more than the movie. I think in the movie we were missing a lot of important context. The knowledge of how the world worked made me only want to destroy the Capitol instead of the entire world. It was important to know what was going on in Katniss's head to really portray what was going on between characters.
I liked Katniss. I could identify with her. I also liked that she didn't seem to make arbitrarily stupid decisions just to advance plot.
The action was fast paced the story kept me engaged and interested in what was going to happen. Even if at times I wasn't sure I wanted to see what was going to happen next. I was relatively ok with the level of violence (I can't go into a story like this envisioning rainbows after all) until the very end. The last scene in the arena was too much and in a way ruined the book for me. (Note: I had a spoiler bit here, but I can't get it to lj cut for some reason and the spoiler link didn't work from the html given on goodreads. Too tired to figure that out so I just took it out).
I'm unsure of what it says about society that the series (and movie) are so popular. I'd hope that people are waiting for the Capital to be overthrown, but there's just something about so much excitement about a story of a bunch of teenagers killing each other for the entertainment of others that bothers me.
I'm not really sure how this is all supposed to play out. I'd hope that somehow in the end they change the world for the better but that seems unrealistic. If they aren't able to do something with the world in the next couple of books, it will just be depressing.
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