The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

First Paragraph: "When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. Today is the day of the reaping."

Review: I read this book last November but I had to do a review on it here because it was AWESOME. My definition of awesome may be different than other people's but this book was just ... great.

It is based on a post-apocalyptic North America that has already endured wars over remaining resources and then a government arose called "The Capitol" and organized 13 districts across the continent. Needless to say the districts did not like the capitol so they formed a rebellion. Well, the capitol won by a landslide because they have all the money and technology and they completely annihilated district 13 - leaving nothing alive. Anyway, to make sure that the districts never form any such rebellion again The Capitol holds the annual Hunger Games to remind everyone that they are in charge.

The Hunger games begin by having a lottery and they pick 1 girl and 1 boy from each district between the ages of 12 and 18 to compete in these hunger games (so a total of 24 contestants). So you wonder, "How does holding a competition make people stay in line?" The answer is simple, it's a fight to the death.

They hold the competition in a huge arena that varies in landscape from year to year. The desert, mountains, etc. It's a huge arena that use tiny cameras to catch all the excitement and the gamemakers can control all the variables. If things aren't interesting enough for those watching they can start a massive forest fire, or unleash some rabid beast. The last remaining contestant is the victor and they are granted fame and glory.

The book starts on the day of the 79th annual Hunger Games lottery.

The rest of the book is completely unpredictable which is why I liked it so much. When I put it down Sunday night to go to bed my brain kept trying to figure out ways that the book could possibly end up and out of all the ways it came up with ... it never did figure out the actual story line.

Anyway, the only bad part about the book was when I found out it's the first book in a trilogy so there will be 2 more books to come. The next one - Catching Fire - comes out in Sept 2009. Boo!

The first book does stand alone ... there is a definite "ending", but then you read the last page and you wish you would have stopped reading just 1 page earlier because now you have to wait another year to figure out how the story "really ends" and then another year after that to find out how THAT story ends.

I really hate waiting.

Click Here for the publisher's (Scholastic Press) website for The Hunger Games.