This post will contain spoilers. Be warned.
Spoiler space.
More spoiler space.
Enough spoiler space.
So, as I’ve said in my first two posts about the Hunger Games, I’m just not going to read the rest of the books. I can’t. I won’t. So I’m reading about what happens, and an interesting thread has developed. And I’m in an interesting spot to evaluate whether or not it makes sense to suggest the entire thing was a set up by the Rebellion against the Capitol.
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This post will contain spoilers. Be warned.
Spoiler space.
More spoiler space.
Enough spoiler space.
One reason I had so much trouble with the Hunger Games is that the book gave me no relief from tension. I don’t ask for a Jar Jar Binks or something so stupid, but I’m human and I can’t sustain fear and sadness for an entire book.
As I thought about this on the way to, at, and on the way home from the grocery store tonight (buying replacements for food I had to chuck after Sandy), I figured it out: the tension relief was there all along. I just didn’t get it because I’m not a teenage girl.
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This review will avoid spoilers. Though I know I’m late to the Hunger Games series, I doubt I’m the only one.
So, some background before I begin properly. I’m no stranger to ‘young adult’ fiction. I’ve been reading it since before I was a young adult, and know full well that Fantasy and Science Fiction have always been lumped in there since the themes seemed to inappropriate for actual adults. I grew up on (contrary to Martin Prince) Asimov, Herbert, and Tolkien, with dalliances with Anthony and LeGuin. In college I got into Clarke and Heinlein, and in adulthood I’ve branched into Turtledove. This stuff is my pleasure reading home territory.
So, I wasn’t afraid to try the Hunger Games. It was an impulse buy at Costco a few months ago. I just hardly read anymore, so I only picked it up last night thanks to having no power for 25 hours after the passing by of Hurricane Sandy.
That said, I’ve had mixed feelings about it, and while at first I came way feeling badly about it, I think in the end I came into it with the wrong expectations. Contrary to the above, this is a book for teenagers. Go in expecting otherwise and you face disappointment.
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