The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This seemed way too evil and disturbing for younger readers. But it was an amazing read once you got past the fact that the protagonist was making horrific decisions at such a young age. It was hard to imagine a modern teen being so calculating in the face of such trials. But Collins was, nevertheless, convincing. Reading Stephen King’s “The Running Man,” tempts one to believe that this kind of plot can never be written with too much realism. But Collins has done it, and done it well and even as a YA book. I am quite impressed.
Collins portrays a future in which the rulers of North America (from a capital in the Rockies) control all the other sections of the country, exploiting most of them so that they are left with severe poverty. They run an annual arena which the populace is required to watch on TV. A male and female teen from each sector are drafted and required to participate if no one volunteers to take the victims place. They are forced to fight until only one survivor is left. However, because this is a TV show, the “gamemasters” have ways of making sure the conflict does not slow down. Furthermore, the audience can help out their favorites so that one is constantly working them as well as fighting. Violence and lies are the only hope for life.
I won’t give this away except to say that Collins manages to give the reader a glimmer of triumph over tyranny while, at the same time, entangling the protagonist in enough moral compromise to make the victory questionable.