The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Sixteen year old Katniss Everdeen lives in the remnants of what used to be the United States. Now it's the nation of Panem, a Capitol with twelve outlying districts, each one poorer than the next. Every year each district is required to send one girl and one boy of a certain age to the Capitol to compete in the ultimate reality show: a fight to the death in a government controlled dome, televised live on TV for all of Panem to see. The winner, who has managed to kill or be the last killed among the twenty-four participants, gets to live a life of relative comfort, but the odds aren't good. And for Katniss, who lives in district twelve, which has only one prior winner, the odds are even worse.

So much is going through my mind with this book right now. Not only is the plot ingenious (though it definitely reminds me of other things, but more about that later**), but the actual reader experience is pretty amazing. I don't think this would be a particularly spoiler-filled review if I were to tell you that people die in this book -lots of them. The entire concept of the Hunger Games is barbaric. Katniss knows it, I know it. But unfortunately, Katniss and other like-minded characters aren't really allowed to vocalize their disgust. So like anyone who wants to survive, Katniss does what she has to do. But as a reader, I realized with disgust that at points I was actually cheering her on with this. Within a couple hundred pages I was practically at Capitol levels of barbarity.

With a concept like that, you wouldn't expect any romance to pop in on this situation, but it does in a surprising way. I knew a little about it going in to this, but since SM recommended it I expected pages and pages reiterating the same thing over and over again: topaz eyes, pale skin, overall perfection, whatever. But thankfully, Stephenie Meyer didn't write this -Suzanne Collins did and she does a fantastic job of weaving together a credible love triangle that not only doesn't have a clear victor, but the heroine, Katniss, doesn't lose her identity within it. Katniss is a strong, kickass girl, who hunts and breaks the law to feed hungry people, loves her sister, and though she may or may not come to love two men in the future, it's not her entire identity. On behalf of all readers who are sick of female characters being completely wrapped up in boys, THANK YOU, SUZANNE COLLINS!

Somehow I had no idea that this was the beginning of a series and not a standalone, so I as I reached the end I started freaking out about how rushed it was going to be. Thankfully, the story is not over, but if anyone can find out the date the next book is going to be published, please let me know ASAP!

I seriously cannot stress how fantastic this book is. What the Capitol represents, the philosophical questions presented, complexities of the characters, these are things I can totally see students writing papers about in a few years -only, like most dumbass students (myself included) they'll probably head over to Spark notes instead of experiencing The Hunger Games firsthand. So get a head start on a new classic and pick this one up ASAP -if only so that your kids don't have to buy it for AP English in about twenty years.

http://thechickmanifesto.blogspot.com/2009/01/hunger-games-by-suzanne-collins.html