The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins . . .

The Hunger Games in one of those books which seems to have taken on a near-mythic quality on certain areas of the internet.  Generally acknowledged to be amazing by these interwebbers, I simultaneously both longed to read it and dreaded it because I was sure it could never live up to its hype.

I am glad, therefore, to be able to give it a generally positive review.  Every book has its faults of course, but from this first reading I’m happy to say that The Hunger Games is pretty low on the making-me-want-to-chuck-the-book-across-the-room front.

I read the entire thing in one day - it definitely had that just-a-little-bit-more, can't-put-it-down feel - and left me immersed in the world long after I’d put it down.  This did, unfortunately, result in a touch of bad-moodiness for the next couple of days as, you should be warned, the story tends to feel pretty bleak.

The Hunger Games follows Katniss, a teenage girl from District Twelve in the country of Panem, a dystopian future version of North America.  Every year, each District must give two tributes - a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 - to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised fight to the death, as punishment for an earlier uprising against the Capitol.  When Katniss's younger sister Primrose is picked as tribute, Katniss volunteers to go in her place.

When I first heard the premise of the story, I assumed a major theme would be reality television and the increasingly ridiculous extremes it is being taken to.  It turned out, however, that The Hunger Games deals with ideas so much bigger than that, and is all the better for it.  This is a book about survival, cruelty and freedom.

Collins is excellent at portraying the brutality of the world she has created, not only in the Hunger Games themselves but in Katniss's life before that, living with poverty and oppression, avoiding starvation only because she learned how to hunt illegally.

These elements are what stood out most for me in this novel.  There is a love story - which from what I can gather develops further in books two and three - but it doesn't dominate the world.

I was therefore surprised to see some reviewers dismissively lump it into the category of 'a book for teenage girls' which, while obviously not actually an insult, is no doubt meant as one.  They group it with stuff like Twilight which, for a book as harsh and cruel as The Hunger Games can be, seems at the very least a bit odd.  Let's face it, Twilight can be, well, a bit fluffy, with a surprisingly low death count considering most of its characters are bloodthirsty murderers.  The Hunger Games, on the other hand, is a true fighting book, full of action and never dull, even in moments of quiet.

It's not that I'm trying to applaud or glorify violence - I just admire the fact that Collins isn't afraid to write death, to kill her characters if the story calls for it.  It shows a certain bravery, I think, and commitment to the plot.  In a way, it makes it feel true.

By Bethany Combs

You can read more of Beth's reviews here