#545 The Hunger Games

My lovely son commented on yesterday's post that he wants me to write about what I thought of the book "The Hunger Games." The book was so highly recommended to me by so many people that I felt pretty remiss about not having read it yet. There are three books in the Hunger Games series, so I asked T to pull them from our family library for me. I read the first book a week ago in basically one day.

I couldn't put it down. The story is riveting. It is set in the future. There had been many bad things happen in the United States and the new government system is a president who lives in the Capitol which is somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, and there are no more states; now people live in Districts. There were 13 Districts, but when District 13 mounted an uprising against the Capitol, the District was destroyed. Part of the fallout of the destruction of District 13 was the creation of the Hunger Games in which each district must send two tributes, a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18, to battle to the death with the tributes from the other districts.

We meet the people from District 12. It's hard not to fall immediately in love with the heroine, Katniss. She's strong and tough and kind. You meet her friends, you meet her family. You know she's she's going to be a tribute. You know she's going to be ok because there are two more books to follow. How she becomes a tribute and how she survives the Games are what power the book. I promise that you won't want to stop reading even for a minute even though some of the story is gut-wrenching, sob-inducing, what-kind-of-crap-is-this-yelling mayhem.

The author, Suzanne Collins, has created a world that is unimaginable. What kind of government would force us to send our children to a game where there can be only one champion and the others must die for one to win? She describes a world where Big Brother is indeed watching; where travel between the Districts is forbidden, where even leaving the confines of your own District is punishable by death. Can you imagine living say, in Wyoming and never being able to leave? Ugh. It's terrifying. It's a world where one sentence may bring the wrath of the President upon you in the form of torturing your family or your friends while you watch. It's not pretty. But you keep reading because you feel that Katniss will figure out a way to stop the madness.

I've got about 90 pages left in the second book "Catching Fire." It might be even better than the first book. I find myself literally holding my breath sometimes as I wonder what is going to happen next. I'd love to finish it tonight, but I don't know if I'll be able to. I was super-active today and I'm running on fumes. I'm going to try, though!

OK, T, there you go. What did you think of my review? I didn't give too much away, did I? Do you think I made anyone want to read the book?