The Hunger Games - Suzanne COLLINS

The Hunger Games

Suzanne COLLINS

Scholastic

454 pages

Paperback

Plot

When 16-year-old Katniss's young sister, Prim, is selected as District 12's female representative, Katniss volunteers to take her place. She and her male counterpart Peeta, are pitted against bigger, stronger representatives, some of whom have trained for this their whole lives. , she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

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After two years boycotting them, I finally made the move and read The Hunger Games, better late than never don't you think?
Again, its once I've seen the movie that I decided to read the book.
The movie itself is quite good but not as faithful to the book as I would have liked.

Usually the heroes I read all have powers, but not this time.
This time, the heroin is just like you and me, no powers and god she could use some with the life she has.
And as if her life wasn't bad enough, now she must go in this arena, fighting and killing for her life.

The story is well put together, I didn't get bored one second in this first book.
The universe we're living in through the story is really interesting though totally twisted.
It stays kinda realistic and totally plausible, I wouldn't be surprised if our world ended up like this in a few centuries (let's not hide, we are capable of the best as much as the worst)

Let's talk characters now. Katniss: I love her.Unlike the heroines we're seeing lately, who are passive most of the time (I will not talk about Bella Swan), Katniss doesn't act as a victim, she will fight for her ideas and what she thinks is right.
The rest of the characters stay quite interesting despite some stereotypes like Gail the best friend totally in love with her but she doesn't see it, or Haymitch the mentor nobody would even think of having but turns out to be Katniss' best ally.
Only one shadow for me: Peeta. I know, 90% of the hunger games fans are team Peeta but the only thing that comes to my mind in this first book is slapping him in the face.
He spent his time pitying himself, crying about his poor fate. That said, I did like his cleverness and his vice, he's far from being stupid.
Well, what also didn't help is the fact that at the first sight of Peeta we already knew how the romance between him and Katniss would ends.

Anyway, after all this boycotting it was at the end quite a nice surprise :)