Hunger Games

I'm halfway through.  Which is to say I've read the first book and I'm halfway through the second.  It is very difficult to critique because I've read so very little that can be compared to it.  I think if you've enjoyed any of the teeny bopper Twilight books, you would probably really enjoy the Hunger Games series.  I tried to read Twilight but was thoroughly nauseated and bored.  Aside from an interesting premise, (and by interesting, I mean interesting enough to spend 5 minutes thinking about it) the story was painfully slow and intellectually numbing.  Sorry if you liked it.  This is just one man's opinion.  Still, I don't see how anyone who is exposed to good fiction would think that book was well-written.  I'm actually a bit uncomfortable just re-living the week or so I wasted on it.  In the end, I simply wanted to regain my adulthood and return to a more literate world.

Hunger Games has moments that are like that, too.  And it seems, the longer the book goes on, the sillier it gets.  Almost as if the author really wants to indulge in talking about a teenage girls' interests.  And she's really been trying to rein it in and stick to the story.  And as the story moves along, either she just can't help herself or the editors identified the market for the story and she began talking more and more about the all-too-boring details.  What makes this book good is the creativity and the action.  It is certainly NOT an insightful look at relationships - offering us those wonderful moments of being able to relate to remarkable characters.  These characters are remarkable because of what they DO - not because of what they say about us. 

This teenage girl who can survive in the wilderness and shoot squirrells with her bow and arrow - doesn't care about her physical appearance or makeup or her hair or her clothes and yet we're subjected to LOTS of information about all of these things.  I'm offering this disclaimer:  if you read these books and you're thinking, 'how did Tommy take this part seriously?' - well, it was hard.

I've glanced around enough to note that the author has a younger audience in mind.  Certainly the rather (yawn) bizarre love triangle is kept really childish and in a way I'm thankful.  But it's SO tedious and emotionally lacking that she'd have done better just keeping the whole thing about friendship and left it at that.  The young adult angle makes me give some consideration here that she's not trying to pull off Crime and Punishment.  But I think we're giving too much credit if we end there.  There seem to be some serious limitations to her craft.  Principally, there's NO effort here to interpret a rather rich allegory.  One might think of the monkey who when given enough opportunites, types out a great poem.  OK, that might be going a bit too far.  But the story she tells is so ... hmmm ... IMAGINATIVE and potentially PROFOUND, I wonder if perhaps a bit of luck was involved.

Understand what I'm trying to say.  The lack of insightful material is only glaring because the story is so darn good and the action is really well executed.  So often we see authors full of such self-importance that we're expected to gather meaning when the narrative simply doesn't have the backbone to do so.  They want to say something about morals, about society but they don't take the time to make us care about the characters or what's happening to them.  This author gives us plenty of story and plenty to say.  She just doesn't get around to saying it.  So, there are (so far) too many extremes to come to an overall grade.  Examples?

Action - the action in the book is so well done, I defy anyone to stop reading in the middle of the most dangerous moments.
Moments of Non-Action - these are the parts of the book that leave me thinking that my 8 year old would really enjoy the story more than I.

Concept and Construct - the place, time, 'sci-fi' stuff, all really, really creative and compelling
Background - almost no explanation is given to clue us in on how these things came to be

The reader lets us know in VIVID detail through a 1st person format what the main character is thinking at all times but gives no clue as to what the other (frankly well-developed characters otherwise) are thinking or more importantly, what their motivations are.

Overall, this story is worth reading.  I think it is one of the most creative action stories I've ever read.  Yes, she needs to develop the (really obvious) angle dealing with how a society can deteriorate and take on such an abhorrent form - a mixture of primitive and highly advanced groups with a stark decline in human rights standards overall.  One question that just screams out at me is "Why is the upper class, presumably more educated, so vapid, wholly stupid, and most of all, so cruel?".  She needs to contextualize the (equally obvious) institutional caste system.  (If this is an industrialized nation, where is the bourgeoisie?)  But I'm hoping that as I keep reading, she'll eventually let us in some of these unexplored pages of the history behind Panem and how it became such a mess.  The action is so good and the places so well-imagined, I'm sure to find out soon.