Hunger Games Book Review

As I posted yesterday, I recently read the Hunger Games trilogy. I fully realize I didn't do the books justice; therefore, I am doing a book review on it right now.

The Hunger Games is written by Suzanne Collins. The movie is premiering on March 23rd.

**This book review does contain spoilers(plot spoilers mainly), although I tried to keep them to a minimum**
The Hunger Games occur anually in the world of Panem, which is what America becomes, after years and years of wars, and starvation. There aren't that many people left, but there are enough to form 12 districts, plus the Capitol. At one point there were 13 districts; but the 13th district rebeled against the Capitol(the goverment, which makes all the decisions for Panem). The Capitol was stronger, with more numbers, and more weapons, and took out the 13th district leaving only 12. As a way to remind the people of the 13th districts rebellion, and ultimate destruction, they formed the Hunger Games.

The Hunger Games, happen annually, and each district must provide a girl "tribute" and boy "tribute" between the ages of 12 and 18, making 24 teenagers in all. The 24 tributes are put into an arena, and are forced to kill one another off, until only one remains.The whole world of Panem is forced to watch, and make a celebration of the whole thing.When only one tribute remains, he or she, is then the "victor" and is allowed to return to his or her district.

This book centers around Katniss( who is 16), whose younger sister is picked as the girl tribute for district 12. She volunteers to go in her place knowing that Prim (who is only 12) would never survive.Katniss ends up knowing the boy tribute, who gave her and her family food when they were starving.
In the rest of the first book, they are thrown into the arena, must decide to help each other or not (keeping in mind that there can only be one victor), and try not to be killed.

That is the summary of the plot, without giving away the ending.

My take on the book is that the age group seems to be aimed towards pre-teens and teens (as far as the simplicity of the writing in the book goes), and you will find on many websites that it is geared towards 10-18 year olds.

The problem is, the plot isn't really geared for 10 and 11 year olds. There is a lot of violence I(not gory, and not in great detail, but there's 24 teenagers trying to kill each other, so you're gonna get some violence), that I think would haunt some kid's nightmares. For instance, there is a 12 year old's death that had me in tears, not because it was gory, or nasty, but because she was 12, and that's where the author's "moral" comes into play. That forcing teenagers, especially 12 year olds, to kill each other is wrong. But everyone in Panem is too chicken to do anything about it. Because of what happened to District 13.

I thought the plot was really good, but I had some issues with a few deaths I thought could have been left out, and a few things I don't know that Suzanne Collins totally thought through.

As I said before, the fact that in Mockingjay(the seconfd book in the trilogy), everyone but Katniss and Peeta seemed to know about the escape out of the arena, but they all seemed genuinely shocked when Katniss figured out that the arena was a "clock". Since they had a gamemaker on their "side", it seems like he would have given all those people that hint. It just didn't seem right to me. But, that's just my opinion.

The book also didn't end in the way I would have liked, but I'm in the minority there, as everyone else seemed to have loved the ending. It wasn't how I would have chosen to end the trilogy though.

Overall, I think it's definitely worth your time to read it. And if you're planning to go see the movie and not read the books beforehand, I would like to take this moment to tell you that you HAVE to read the books first. It should be a law, I think it's so important. ;) But, seriously, you really do have to read the books before you see the movie, I think it will make the movie 5 thousand times better.