The Hunger Games trilogy (massive spoilers): Anyone want to discuss?

Cafe Society
1

Seriously, massive spoilers.
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Anyway, I really liked the first book and I have no interest generally in YA fiction. I only picked it up because I was sick and didn’t feel up to reading anything weightier. Everything about The Hunger Games was just pitch-perfect. Strong female protagonist, cool premise, believable dilemmas for the characters, and a rip-roaring pace with tons of cliff-hangers that propel you on effortlessly.

Perhaps it was because I wasn’t expecting much, but this book really hooked me, so much so that I immediately went out and got the second one instead of waiting a couple days for Amazon. The second book, Catching Fire, I felt was okay. I liked the new hunger games even if it was a bit predictable that the whole thing would be reprised.

What kept me from enjoying Catching Fire was the difficulty in suspending my disbelief in the whole premise: that simply threatening suicide was enough to spark a revolution. Seriously? We’ve been oppressed, degraded, punished, and had our children killed for sport for 74 years, but watching a girl grab some poisonous berries suddenly gives us the courage to rebel. D’oh! Why didn’t we think of this sooner? It didn’t completely ruin the book, but the seeming illogic annoyed me. It didn’t help that at every turn, Collins kept hammering on the idea that all this started with the damn berries. Anyway, the ending was rushed too, with one of those, “He sat me down and explained that all this had been a conspiracy…” expository bombs that tries to compress several chapters into a paragraph. Unsatisfying, but still forgivable.

Finally, Mockingjay. Erg. I guess those blurbs by Stephanie Meyer were a bad sign, because Collins takes the badass Katniss the Vampire Slayer of book one and replaces her with Bella fucking Swan. “Oh dear me, I can’t film a propaganda piece, I think I’ll faint. Won’t somebody think of the Peeta?!?” I think she passes out 5 or 6 times in this book. She spends far more time swooning in her Batsuit than actually fighting in it.

As if that weren’t bad enough, none of the plot developments make any sense in this book. We have an accident filming a propaganda piece, instead of retreating one block, let’s go on a suicide mission with no plan, no preparation, and no idea what we’re doing. Sound good?

Let’s agree to restart the Hunger Games, but just for pretend so I can kill the President. Huh? Let’s have the sister magically appear at the front lines. You know, because the medics are always out in front of the troops. Let’s have a big discussion about nuclear deterrence at the beginning, and then just ignore it. Let’s have the evil mastermind of the whole book have no back-up plan and just allow himself to be captured, off-page to boot.

Anyway, I thought it a very unsatisfying conclusion to the series. However, I was happy that I didn’t start reading until all three books had been released. I would have hated to wait a year for the final book to come out and then be so disappointed. In fact, I think I’m going to make this a new rule with all trilogies or series; I’ll wait until it’s all done, thanks anyway, Mr. Martin.

Did anyone else read the series? What did you think? Am I being too hard on the final book because I liked the first one so much? Did anyone else want to slap Katniss about ten times during the final installment?

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I just finished Mockingjay too. I found it a little rocky just because it has been so long since I read the first two books, I barely remembered what was going on.

You’re right about the Mary Sue aspect as well, I got a few eyerolls out of it. Burn scars everywhere except the face, of course!

The ending felt rushed also. She finally had to choose between Peeta and Gale…well, I’m not convinced of her choice and I’m not so sure she was either.

Well, whatever. Overall, it was a very decent series, and I’ll keep an eye out for more Suzanne Collins books.

3

So I skipped all the spoiler stuff (so far)

In a non spoler way…is this a good series? It looks fascinating to me and I’m thinking of getting it. Should I?

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I really liked the first one. The next two: meh.

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I really liked the first, liked the second, and tolerated the third. Someone I was talking to said it felt like the author was contracted for a minimum number of pages, started getting close to that number, then quickly wrapped it up. Good series, but not as good as The Dark is Rising as a series.

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I had the exact same reaction to the three of the books that you did, Erdosain. I liked the first one and really enjoyed Katniss’s character, but I disliked how she degraded over the course of the three books into somebody who needed to be protected and treated like a mascot rather than a true rebel.

The bit about her sister seemed to come out of nowhere, and lacked emotional impact because Prim has little characterization and we only see her interact with Katniss a few times. The bit about Gale possibly being behind her sister’s murder seemed like an easy way to paint him as a bad guy and shove him out of the way to let Peeta get Katniss. The very end creeped me out a bit with their (strangely unnamed) kids playing on the graves of their predecessors. Creepy.

I missed that Katniss agreed to another Hunger Games just to assassinate Coin/Snow; I thought they were going to do that either way. I thought she was just being vindictive, and really hated that decision. Should’ve read that more closely.

All in all, a really disappointing end to the series. I think the first book stands pretty well on its own, though.

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Hmmm, well, now that you mention it, I may be completely off the mark with that conclusion as Collins didn’t bother making it clear. At first I read it as you did, a totally out-of-character decision from Katniss and Haymitch that just doesn’t make sense. However, in the epilogue, Katniss says there are no more Hunger Games and that, in fact, the site of each Hunger Games is treated as a memorial to those who died in them. I guess I just assumed that had Katniss been complicit in the further murder of children she would have said something self-recriminating or something. Like fear that her new children would face reprisals from that decision.

The fact that Collins just dropped any mention of new Hunger Games, combined with the murder of Coin just after the decision, led me to believe that the whole issue had just been dropped in the confusion following the assassination. I think you may be right that my assumption that Katniss was deceiving Coin so that she wouldn’t interfere with the execution of Snow is an unwarranted assumption on my part.

It’s annoying that Collins didn’t bother following up on this point since, you know, the whole hook of the series is how awful it is to make children fight to the death in gory gladiatorial combat. You’d think she’d want to explore the moral implications of the victim of this possibly condemning others to her same fate. Maybe this book was rushed to print without any beta readers. It certainly reads that way. It seems like Collins was perhaps originally planning a darker end to the book: 13 in charge of the country, new Hunger Games each year featuring the Capitol children, and Katniss, Peeta, and Haymitch living out their lives trying to dull their conscience to the fact that the revolution has become as morally bankrupt as the Capitol. Maybe this was just an artifact of that ending and never got cleaned up or explained.

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As someone who formerly worked in a library children’s department, I liked her Gregor the Overlander series (grades 4 - 8). I was always recommending it to kids. The first one was written in 2003, and there’s 5 I believe? The series is also complete, so you don’t have to wait for more books.

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I’m not looking at the spoilers, but as soon as the library gets Mockingjay I’ll be right here to talk about it.

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I had much of the same reaction Liked the 1st book, thought the second was flawed, and was disappointed in the 3rd. A couple of (overly critical) opinions:

Almost all the major characters really didn’t exist other than as foils for Katniss. Until book 3, Gale and Peeta could have been interchangable as far as personality is concerned. Prim was only precious because Katniss says she was. Mom was fragile because Katniss says she was, not by any of her actions after page 10 of the first book, etc. It didn’t help that Katniss usually came across as a surly, self-important, whiny saint most of the time. By the end, I really didn’t like her as a character very much.

Instead of strengthening, Katniss gets weaker as the series goes on.

It seems that that the author knew that a rebellion was the obvious and necessary next step in the series after the first book, but didn’t know how to really write one. As a result, the 2nd book dragged until she pulled the “back into arena” author’s saving throw - making the second book better after that point.

It seemed like the author was writing the screenplay (or the video game equivalent) in her head as she went.

Things I liked:

The action scenes, particularly in the arena, were well written.

I liked that the Area 13 people had their own kind of pragmatic evil, and used the media in their warfare.

I liked that a children’s (young adult) author didn’t shy away from death and other unpleasantness, or didn’t mind getting her main character’s hands dirty.

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My friend’s critque “I liked it better when it was called Battle Royale.”

So how much of a rip off is it?

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While the theme, kids made to kill kids, is about as original as your friend’s incisive criticism, I’d be surprised if someone who liked Battle Royale didn’t like at least the first book. To me it’s like any dystopic or zombie novel. Sure, it wasn’t her idea but it was a very entertaining and well-executed riffing on the theme.

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I hate to me-too, but I felt the same way about the three books. 1. Excellent. 2. Good. 3. Disappointing.

I did have some emotional impact from the loss of Prim. That worked for me. What I didn’t like was how rushed the final battle and it’s outcome were. I was hoping for something meatier. I was glad she was willing to kill off some non-minor characters like Finnick (who I was really starting to like). But they totally should have knocked off Peeta. He was jeopardizing the whole mission. I guess that showed that Katniss “loved” him, but still…it was weak.

In all though, I think the series was a good exploration of colonialism, propaganda, and cultural voyeurism (reality TV to the most extreme end) in a way that is accessible to young adults.

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I had the same overall response as everybody else here, apparently. With regard to Mockingjay, I felt that the first two thirds (propos and psychological trauma) should have been about half as long as they were, and the battle for the Capitol should have taken up much more than it did. The resolution of the romantic triangle felt wishy-washy, too.

I do agree that Katniss killed Coin because Coin was trying to replace Snow, rather than create a real Republic. Between what Snow said when Katniss found him in his rose garden, and the way Coin tried to reinstate the Hunger Games, Katniss realized what was up and killed her.

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I just finished it, like, five minutes ago. I read them straight through in, what, four days? Because the first one was so good.

The second two were still good but suffered from the flaws already mentioned, although I do think some of that is the author’s attempt to portray the thinking of a girl just past childhood who’s been exposed to more than a critical mass of violence and betrayal.

The one thing that was ridiculously out of character - she wouldn’t have agreed to the Capital Games.

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I don’t think she agreed to the Hunger Games-Collins was trying to imply that if Katniss hadn’t voted for the Games, that Coin would have found a way to take her out. In fact, the whole thing was almost a setup to make sure the Mockingjay threw in her lot with Coin’s presidency and outlook on post-Revolution construction (think back to how throughout the book she’s warned off of Coin, Coin wanted to rescue Peeta initially and not her, and that Coin sees her as a threat given her emotional role in the uprising).

Haymitch voted with Katniss because he knew she was up to something in terms of taking Coin out and that she would never vote for the Hunger Games knowing what she had been through and what he had been through thirty years (or whatever it was) before. That’s why she says “Now I’m going to see if Haymitch really knows me inside and out.”

I see people talking about how it was so out of character…I’m beginning to think the subtle approach was probably a mistake.

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Interesting coincidence of a post -

I just finished the first one a couple of days ago. Found it because I needed a new read and The A.V. Club recently reviewed Mockingjay.

The review sounded promising, so I figured I’d start from the beginning of the series.

As for The Hunger Games - I found it good, but not quite great. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

It moved a bit fast (yeah, that’s part of being a YA book) - as in, "OK!, here’s our heroine! WHOOPS, OK, now she’s in the games! WHOOPS, now she’s already halfway there! …etc.

I thought Katniss and Peeta were great characters. Both rang very true. Katniss is a very young woman, tough as nails who cares first and foremost about her sister. Her resentment of her mother, her dedication to her young sister and her reluctance at any romance fit her painful past quite well.

I liked Peeta as well. I can sympathize with a strong but mushy nice guy who falls for the tough girl, who would do anything to protect her but still ends up getting hurt -both in defending her and by her.

For a YA book - man, this one is a bit dark. I had a hard time with the brutality inflicted on very young characters. See: Rue.

I’ve just started Catching Fire; If I finish it up this weekend maybe I’ll have more to say. This is a very promising series. :smiley:

18

After thinking about this a bit more and reading some more reviews online, I agree that Katniss agreed to the new games to deceive Coin. The problem is that it didn’t seem necessary at that point in the book. IIRC, the meeting of the victors to decide this took place immediately before Katniss was scheduled to execute Snow. If she hadn’t agreed, what was Coin going to do? NOT let her perform the execution that everyone was waiting for? Observed the execution from behind arrow-proof glass because she suddenly didn’t trust Katniss? Of course not. There was no reason for Katniss to agree to the games at that late hour. She was also taking the very real risk that whoever succeeded Coin would go ahead with the games as voted on. It’s not like there was any guarantee that they’d do a re-vote after the assassination. Maybe if the meeting had taken place before Coin had agreed to let Katniss do the execution, then it would make sense.

At any rate, Collins could have spared one sentence to clarify that the new games never took place.

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  1. I think it’s 100% obvious that the “new” games never took place.

Coin is dead, Paylor, whom Katniss likes and trusts, is voted in as president (set up throughout the book as the Good Leader to Coin’s Bad Leader) and Plutarch (former head of the Hunger Games) is producing an American Idol show to keep the population upbeat. The first public event wasn’t the Hunger Games, it was Katniss’s trial. Any regime that would have held a hunger games would also have killed off Katniss.

Also note, “we’re in that sweet period where everyone agrees our recent horrors should never be repeated,” he says. And then Peeta’s moving back, they’re hunting and the epilogue clearly talks about how the Hunger Games are abolished with memorials up all over the place etc… There’s no way she’s cutting to Katniss PTSD with one last hunger games going on in the capitol.

  1. The point of setting up the new Hunger Games isn’t to fudge with the execution of the old president. It was Coin’s ploy to

a) Consolidate power and authority in Region 13 (go back to the paragraph where Katniss talks about how this is how they must have carved up power and established the capitol the first time around) and

b) Kill off Katniss if she didn’t agree to the new plan to consolidate 13’s position as the “new Capitol” and throw her moral support (she’s the face of the entire revolution, remember?) and public influence behind Coin and Coin’s regime.

In Katniss’s mind, not voting for the Hunger Games = certain death (based on what everyone has told her about Coin up to that point).

Once she’s dead, Coin goes about establishing her regime, possibly killing Peeta and the dissidents if they make too much of a ruckus about it.

Therefore, voting for the games (Coin keeps her around to use) and using her opportunity to execute Snow to kill off the “New Evil” (Coin) is the best of a bunch of awful alternatives. She’s basically under the impression that if she doesn’t support Coin at that point that she’ll be conveniently “taken out” before the execution.

I’m pretty certain the remaining leaders after Coin are people that Katniss trusts.

I mean, it’s meant to be a little subtle and thinkey because my belief is that Suzanne Collins wants this book trilogy replacing The Giver in school curriculums, but it’s not all that complicated. This is just the anti-war book of her series. Plus, I think her message to 12 year olds is that you’re supposed to think about how every regime has the potential to become evil. 13 is a pretty nasty authoritarian place even though every other district holds it up as this place of freedom etc. (Books 1 &2). It’s only Book 3 that shows us that 13 is almost as grim as the Capitol.

20

I agree with most of your points, but there is nothing in the text that suggests Coin would have (or even could have) killed Katniss in the five minutes between voting on the new Hunger Games and the execution of Snow, where Katniss was planning on killing Coin.

I have no doubt that Coin would have EVENTUALLY killed Katniss, but she certainly couldn’t have done it before Snow’s execution. The only way that your analysis makes sense is if Katniss killing Coin was a spontaneous event. Is that your position?