the hunger games

[alikakadri (deleted)]

c'mon... no one else read the trilogy?


I usually don't go for that over-night popular stuff...

but in a few cases it's proven to be downright good, so when I found the box set for The Hunger Games, I caved in and bought it.

Now I've spent years in college with litterature as my main field and I will base myself on that knowledge to critique here.

I love the story, there's no denying it's a good story to tell. However book one, to me, did not flow easily. It read like the author's first book, first try... something a lot of new authors manage to hide pretty well. I didn't think this was the case here. It did flow better as you progressed to book two and it flowed very well in book three.

I understand why she picked Katniss as the narrator for the story, but I personally was never fond of that angle of narration. You see things through one person's eyes/mind and never get to know the other characters as deeply as you get to know the main one, which is fine in some cases, but not so much in others. As far as first character narration goes, I preferred the Twilight series. It flowed better, there was more going on in Bella's head and, to be honest, the "I said" and "I thought" in The Hunger Games were getting old really quickly.

I was disappointed there wasn't much humor in the three books... or rather I should say the few funny parts are far apart... and a little lacking... The bits you might find amusing/funny are really subjective for the most part... I would give examples, but then that would be a spoiler...
I'd have to say that the parts I found amusing/funny were not in direct proportion to how much drama/pain/gore you might see later, they were much less present. This gave the whole book a darker feel... which, let's face it, might be a plus in this case.

I will add this last... the series begins with a deeper Katniss, but I found it a little cliche that you have the stylist become her confident, that there is some part of Katniss that becomes shallow as she is prepped for the hunger games. It felt like the ultimate pampered chick story in places...

and anyone who's studied literature will understand this... that is a LOT of mention of food. I do mean a LOT.

[awesomov]

`Katniss is definitely one of the worst protagonists I've read about since Ender Wiggins.

Anyway, I didn't much care for the series. Kind of a ripoff of Battle Royale, an excellent Japanese Novel. I mean, sure, I'm okay with plots that are similar to others (thoroughly enjoyed The Running Man by Stephen King, which had the same plot as a Robert Sheckley short story called "The Prize of Peril"). I'm also okay with references, homages, dedications, etc. Then there's stuff like The Hunger Games that pretty much leaves no doubt about where it pulled the source material from, without acknowledgment.