skygiants

obopolsk recommended me The Hunger Games ages and ages back. Subsequently it turned out that the NYPL wait list for this book was very very long, which seemed to reinforce the suggestion! (Fortunately, people in the Brooklyn public library system do not seem to read nearly as much as people in Manhattan, otherwise I would probably still be waiting on it.)

Anyway, The Hunger Games is a book that's been getting a lot of publicity, and it's not really hard to see why - it's pretty instantly compelling. Postapocalyptic US! Teenagers fighting TO THE DEATH! On reality TV! This kind of 'it's all a TV show! An evil TV show! LOOK, REALITY TV IS EXPLOITATIVE AND AWFUL' setup can be cheesy, but when done right it also means that you get lots of fascinating stuff about the characters tailoring their reactions to the viewers to get a desired response and construct a persona and narrative for themselves, and how much that performance differs from reality when it's literally life-and-death at stake - and for the most part Suzanne Collins does it right. The protagonist, Katniss, volunteers for the annual Hunger Games (twenty-four teenagers in the aforementioned live! on TV! fights to the death!) when her little sister's name comes up in the yearly lottery. This makes her pretty instantly sympathetic; all the same, far from being soppy, Katniss is also awesomely hard-core and survival-oriented, and the most interesting thing about the book for me was the various strategies she takes to stay ahead, especially once the games have begun. I also really liked Peeta, the lottery-chosen boy from her district, who's half competition and half partner, and the class stuff going on between them and the rest of the competitors.

If I've got a complaint, it's that Katniss and Peeta almost get to stay too likeable in this setup; I was expecting them to have to make much more difficult moral decisions than they did, by the end. Which isn't to say that they don't have moral dilemmas, but it never got as bad as I expected and sort of wanted it to be. Uh. Possibly I am sometimes a fiction-sadist? That doesn't detract from the compelling nature and readability of the book, though, and I am definitely looking forward to the next one in the series.

Also, for about a day after I read it, I totally could not shake the feeling that cameras were watching me everywhere I went. MY LIFE IS REALLY BORING, WORLD, THERE IS NOTHING WORTH MAKING A REALITY TV NARRATIVE OUT OF HERE!