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A review by beautifulandfullofmonsters
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
5.0
I picked this up for a reread at the perfect time and devoured it in just over a day. Wow, what a ride! This is genuinely a good book that really holds up. I didn’t realize what a blueprint this has been for what I consider a good book ever since I first read it so long ago.
Great pacing, good action, love seeing characters be clever in the way they are in this book. Katniss’ desperate daily scrambling for survival comes through really powerfully. I can see now how important a theme food is and what an effective motif bread is in a way I couldn’t when I read this as a child. The way the depletion of her quiver of arrows was written like a clock ticking down really struck me, some books just give characters an unlimited supply of things like arrows which is a missed opportunity for dramatic tension.
I still feel like I see the whole Katniss/Peeta/Gale dynamic differently from most people who kind of flatten it. I see them as meant to parallel/critic celebrity couple drama in the tabloids, to show the depths of the horrors the Capitol inflicts by denying Katniss freedom even in love, and to be two different perspectives on the just war debate. “Build a wall and save who you can” vs. “bring it all down,” which is a central moral argument of the story and they’re like on two ends of a rope tugging Katniss in different directions. (Catch me quoting Black Sails even here. 🤦🏼♀️)
Great pacing, good action, love seeing characters be clever in the way they are in this book. Katniss’ desperate daily scrambling for survival comes through really powerfully. I can see now how important a theme food is and what an effective motif bread is in a way I couldn’t when I read this as a child. The way the depletion of her quiver of arrows was written like a clock ticking down really struck me, some books just give characters an unlimited supply of things like arrows which is a missed opportunity for dramatic tension.
I still feel like I see the whole Katniss/Peeta/Gale dynamic differently from most people who kind of flatten it. I see them as meant to parallel/critic celebrity couple drama in the tabloids, to show the depths of the horrors the Capitol inflicts by denying Katniss freedom even in love, and to be two different perspectives on the just war debate. “Build a wall and save who you can” vs. “bring it all down,” which is a central moral argument of the story and they’re like on two ends of a rope tugging Katniss in different directions. (Catch me quoting Black Sails even here. 🤦🏼♀️)