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Title | The Hunger Games
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Author | Suzanne Collins
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Press - 2008
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Catching Fire
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Author | Suzanne Collins
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Press - 2009
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First Printing | ---
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Title | Mockingjay
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Author | Suzanne Collins
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Press - 2010
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First Printing | ---
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Title | The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
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Author | Suzanne Collins
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Cover Art | Tim O'Brien
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Publisher | Scholastic Press - 2020
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First Printing | Scholastic Press - 2020
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Category | Dystopian Society
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Katniss Everdeen, Peeta Mellark, Gale Hawthorne, Haymitch Abernathy, Coriolanus Snow, Lucy Gray Baird
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Main Elements | Dystopia
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Website | www.suzannecollinsbooks.com
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 The Hunger Games
Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning? In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.
Catching Fire
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.
In Catching Fire, the second novel of the Hunger Games trilogy, Suzanne Collins continues the story of Katniss Everdeen, testing her more than ever before...and surprising readers at every turn.
Mockingjay
Katniss Everdeen, girl on fire, has survived, even though her home has been destroyed. Gale has escaped. Katniss's family is safe. Peeta has been captured by the Capitol. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution is unfolding.
It is by design that Katniss was rescued from the arena in the cruel and haunting Quarter Quell, and it is by design that she has long been part of the revolution without knowing it. District 13 has come out of the shadows and is plotting to overthrow the Capitol. Everyone, it seems, has had a hand in the carefully laid plains--except Katniss.
The success of the rebellion hinges on Katniss's willingness to be a pawn, to accept responsibility for countless lives, and to change the course of the future of Panem. To do this, she must put aside her feelings of anger and distrust. She must become the rebels' Mockingjay - no matter what the personal cost.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined -- every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
I had planned to not read this series. Firstly, I tend to get turned off of books that have a bunch of pre-teens going ga-ga over it. I had actually semi-enjoyed the Twilight series until the fans started cry out to have Edwards love child *gag* at which point I started becoming very critical of the series. Secondly, it seemed too much like Lord of the Flies for kids. Now I've never read Lord of the Flies, but when I was much younger I saw a scene where the kids had gone kind of feral, and that really freaked me out. I will never read Lord of the Flies now, it was just too disturbing.
But everyone kept telling me I had to read this one. I compromised and saw the movie with my friends. A movie which I in fact ended up enjoying. It wasn't so much about the Games as it was about Katniss. So when another friend offered an eBook copy, I said ok. I'm generally against making copies of ebooks, but as I would NEVER have bought it, and in fact the author didn't lose out anymore than if I had borrowed a physical copy of the book, I went ahead.
So I started reading...and I liked it. Katniss was a strong protagonist. While she's confused about her relationships with Peeta and Gale, you can't exactly fault her. At least she's not a Bella, running around thinking she's not good enough for the love of her life. No, Katniss had already decided not to marry, so that she'd never have to watch her kids die in the Hunger Games.
I could see there was so much more to this story, the games were just a symptom of an underlying disease. This is a definite Dystopia, where the districts live under punishing conditions while the Capitol grows fat off of their hard labour. But as Katniss finds out, not everyone in the Capitol are evil. Cinna, Portia, they were born there and just don't know any different. In fact I found the Capitol to be a sort of fascinating place, and when you think of it, is living in a big North American city compared to living in drought stricken Africa any different than what is in this book? So before you look down your nose at the Capitol, think first about how *you* live compare to so many millions who don't have access to books, any books.
That said however, the ones running the show are not exactly nice people. President Snow smells of flowers and blood. At the time I'm writing this, I don't yet know why. He's definitely one nasty guy. But again, from his point of view, he's just trying to keep together a country that is starting to fracture. One person's freedom fighters is another person's terrorist. Keep that in mind the next time you watch the News in the Middle East...
And Katniss, the growing symbol of the rebellion is a thorn in his side. Kill her, she becomes are martyr, but let her live, and she instills defiance.
It is well written, action paced, with interesting characters. I've even grown attached to surly Haymitch. In fact I think there's a lot more going on in that drunken head of his than anyone can guess. He *knows* how to play the Game.
The second book deals with the aftermath of the first. It was a tough one to read, Katniss having to go through one loss after another. I'm quite attached to my family, friends and even my stuff, I can't imagine having to give it all up. And to realize that you are a pawn in a much bigger Game, a game you don't know anything about, you don't know the rules, and you have no control over. Which leads into the third book. I found this the weakest of the three, because while I understood Katniss being divided between Peeta and Gale, it just started to get annoying the amount of time she spent thinking about it, and the boys making a point of it, while there's this big war going on they might not survive. But it didn't disappoint in it's ability to surprise me. I frankly couldn't see how the story was going to end, even as I approached the final chapters. Can't believe some of my favorite characters got killed off though.
I really loved this series, and given how many really terrible young adult books there are out there, where the girl is a helpless damsel in distress who doesn't have enough braincells to stop mooning over some mysteriously handsome guy, this series is like a breath of fresh air. Yes there is some romance, but the angst isn't about boys, its over life and death, and that kind of angst I consider well justified.
April 2020
I was trying to decide if we really needed another Hunger Games book, but then I didn't know it was about Coriolanus Snow and it took place a few decades before the trilogy. In truth, there was a fair amount of background to fill in, both in the world building and in the characters. I didn't love the trilogy so much that I felt I really wanted more but since the library had it I figured why not. In fact I felt Snow was portrayed in an interesting way, I thought he'd be shown as a good guy, which he more or less is as a kid, but there's the underlying personality traits that will lead him to become what he is. While the events he lives through disillusions him, he's also manipulated or betrayed by those around him, so you sort of see how it killed of whatever good bits he might have had and emphasized the traits that allowed him to survive. After all everyone else around him ended up either dead or destitute, you can't really blame a kid for doing what it takes to avoid that fate, even if it means selling your soul to the most twisted teacher out there.
And the origins of the Hanging Tree are explained. It made me visualize how Snow must have reacted when that song became the anthem of defiance, as he was so closely connected to it, how it was yet another thing that kind of turned on him. It also showed the early versions of the Hunger Game, before they really figured out how to make it a spectacle.
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