Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

After watching the Hunger Games film a couple of weeks ago, I decided I’d give the 3 books a read. I wanted to find out more about what would happen in the world of Panem. So what did I think of them overall? Somewhere between “Meh” and disappointment.

The first book was good. The changes they made between the book and the film seemed like logical ones, especially considering the first person narrative of the book. Overall I’d say the changes made in the film were for the better, giving a much larger view of the impacts of Katniss’ actions in the games and things happening around her than is possible to show in the book. The book is however much more detailed and brutal than the film is but I have to say I probably enjoyed the first book on roughly the same level as the film.

The only major problem I have with the first book (which also carries into the next one, and to a lesser extent the third one), is the structure of the books themselves. Each book is broken into three parts, with each part then containing nine chapters. That would be a perfectly fine thing to do except for the fact that the author insists on rigidly dividing where the breaks are. All the chapters are roughly the same length, and each part takes up almost exactly a third of the book. The problem I had with this was that there seemed to be many logical places where a chapter break should occur but these don’t fit into her system and are simply ignored. Strange time jumps take place (especially in the second book) in the middle of chapters that would make sense to take place between chapters, and a lot of chapters simply end without any defining end point. This may just be the writer in me but it felt very forced.

One major example of this problem I can think of occurs in the first book. The first part of the book deals with the build up to the games and Katniss’ selection and the process she then goes through. But then rather than the second part starting as she goes into the games, a logical transition and resting place, the first chapter of the second part continues dealing with the build-up  and then the second chapter starts the games. It felt like an odd choice as I was reading, but then as I realised how the structure worked, it just seemed like the author was trying to stick to rigidly to it at the expense of clean story-telling.

As for the second two books, things begin to slowly go downhill from the mostly strong first book. The second book begins strongly as we learn more of the impending rebellion of the districts but it begins to fall apart in the second half. In this book, Katniss seems much less sure of herself than in the first and begins to become very whiney towards the end. It does however end quite well, making me intrigued for the final book (and I mean the very end of the book, as in the last page, maybe, up until that it wasn’t really that strong).

Then came the third book which for me was a major disappointment. Rather than the strong Katniss we knew in the first book and who began to make a return towards the end of the second, we now have a Katniss who spends about 50% of her time being drugged into sleep. The book is a constant series of things happening, Katniss simply reacting a bit, and then she has to be knocked out for her own safety. Katniss doesn’t drive anything in the story for much of the book, which would be fine, but this book is told as a first person narrative and this lack of motivation grows wearying as you read. In the final third of the book (yes, the author didn’t give up on her rigid structure) Katniss finally starts driving things along only for the climax to be whipped away from us and an unnecessarily random death thrown in to give a ‘big moment’ which ultimately under-delivered.

A lot of the book feels random, in fact, and I think this is my biggest gripe with it. We don’t get much of a sense of the scale of the war, just random notifications throughout of how much the rebels have taken over. And during all this rebellion and war, where is the rest of the world? With the threat of potential nuclear war in North America, wouldn’t other countries perhaps have a passing interest? Or are we to believe that the US is the only country to survive into the future?

It felt at times like the author was trying to inject some of the feeling of George Orwell’s 1984 in to this final book, but it ends up feeling like a pale comparison of Orwell’s classic. The central concept of who can be trusted throughout the book is an interesting theme in concept, but unfortunately is very predictably dealt with here.

I think that the trilogy would have been better served being just two books. There is a lot of filler in the second and third parts, and to be honest I don’t think the main ‘event’ of the second book was really necessary. The start of the second book could quite easily have led into most of the third.

I can’t say I’d recommend the books to anyone, although at the same time I wouldn’t try to dissuade them either. The first book IS good, but it’s just a pity the next two didn’t live up to its promise.

All in all, I won’t be waiting with baited breath to see the film adaptations.

Rating: 2 stars out of 5