Book Review: The Hunger Games

So I’m really glad I didn’t read Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games until the week the sequel was released. This way I don’t have to wait whatever horrifying amount of time everyone else did (a year?? torment!) for the second installment. I am, as a matter of fact, sitting in Borders poised to get my greedy hands on Catching Fire as soon as I finish this post.

Any review—or even the briefest mention—of The Hunger Games I’ve ever read online gushes about this novel. So now I’m gonna gush a little, too. Because The Hunger Games was nothing short of fabulous.


Set in the ruins of North America, an oppressive government yearly sponsors the Hunger Games, a reality TV show where twenty-four randomly selected young people are forced to fight to the death as the entire nation watches. It’s brutal. It’s terrifying. And there can only be one survivor. The reason the government does this? To show all twelve Districts of the nation of Panea that they are in control. The story follows Katniss, who volunteers to join the Hunger Games in place of her little sister.


It’s sort of a sci-fi thriller adventure dystopian borderline-horror (though not more than I could handle, which means it’s mild :-)) novel that’s fast-paced, to say the least. I finished it in between piano students today, gripping the book with white knuckles and forgetting to blink. I got to the end very, very happy that Catching Fire was only a bookstore away, and wishing eye drops weren’t quite so expensive.


To sum up? Highly impressed. Hats off, Ms. Collins. May book two be just as fabulous and book three be swift in coming!


(As a side note, it seems like there were a lot of typos in Hunger Games. I’ll often find one or two in any given book, but there were upwards of half a dozen in this one. Did anybody else notice that?)