What a clever title, eh? IT WORKS ON SO MANY LEVELS!
Making it in at number 3 on my Kindle reader is the HUNGER GAMES (preceded by Treasure Island and The French Revolution: A Short History [post soon to come]), a book with which all of the writers of this blog are familiar and one which no doubt (!) shall inspire some spirited conversations (at least it better, or I'm quitting this thing for good). Alrighty then! ON TO THE DISCUSSION!
First off, the pros:
I loved the context of the story. A dystopian America where some materialistic capitol in the Rocky Mountains (undoubtedly Denver [where are the Broncos?!]) has control over undefined border regions and exercises that dominion ruthlessly and popularly, an annual exercise of game theory where a completely random selection (not entirely actually, as the author takes great pains to emphasize) of the subjected populace is forced to duke it out in a ever-varied battle royale, and lots and lots of conflict. It is really difficult to imagine a cooler setting for such a story and Suzanne pulled it off in a believable but still ethereal fashion.
The heroine of the story was initially very very very cool. She was independent, very capable, and driven to good works despite a treacherous and unforgiving environment. She hunted, killed, cared for her family, and provided a character very much worth rooting for. HOWEVER, I felt like Suzanne did a little too much to make Katniss more teenage(ish) and more popularly pliable, and the absence of those characteristics were exactly what I found most engaging about the character in the beginning. Further elaboration shall follow, but let me list one more strength.
The action was awesome. Whether Katniss was putting an arrow through her opponents throat or listening to the butchering of a nearby opponent, I felt like I was watching an action movie through my mind, and that is always a treat. Suzanne definitely did not fail to keep you in suspense.
The cons:
The very very stupid love triangle. Lame. Forced. Shallow. Predictable. I wish the element of the love triangle would have been thrown out two paragraphs after being penned, but such dreams turned fanciful in the face of an increasingly hollow love story where I think we have to admit that the author tried way too hard to fabricate something that was completely unnecessary to an otherwise strong story.
The teenage element. I know this is a weak criticism due to the pop-teenage nature of the novel, but I still hold to it. I felt like the author would deviate from her strengths in suspense story-telling to over-emphasize some feature I'm sure she felt needed shoring up, and these seemed to particularly concern the nature of Katniss' feelings. It seemed like there were two Katniss characters, the action hero and the teenage girl, and they didn't seem to be two sides of a single coin so much as substance and shadow.
The predictability of the novel. I know you all agree, but this novel was pegged from pg. 20. The moment you are introduced to a character you know whether they'll live or die (and most of the time in what order [comparatively speaking]) and you also know what the story shall unfold to. It's kind of like opening a present whose contents are mostly known, it just becomes a matter of which flavor.
So there. It was overall a good book, but it could have been better. Much better. I don't feel like I wasted time reading it but I don't feel overly enthused to read the sequels (though I'm certainly more excited to read them than the Harry Potter books)....
2 comments:
FINALLYYYYY you read it. You really ought to slog through til the end, where things take a turn for the unpredictable and gruesome. The final book kicked all sorts of a.
There's a movie in production now! Whoooaaaa
Well... I must say that what I loved most about these books was the freshness. While I'll conceed that the love triangle was not profound, I must argue that it revealed a lot of Katniss' character. Also she was forced to pretend to love one while worrying about what the other would think given he lacked a full understanding of the situation. I must back up Kelsen that you must at least read the 3rd book. I still hold that the 2nd book was just a holding pattern, but the 3rd slaps you around.
Finally Ken you were at a disadvantage, we all read it and raved. As such your expectations were understandably high. Always the movies I like the best are the ones I had little or no expectations for. With all our falling over ourselves over these books you must admit that your expectations were so high as to taint your experience. The more I think about it you must read the 3rd to have truely given the books their full due.
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