Book Review: The Hunger Games Trilogy

By Ian Holbrook

The Hunger Games Trilogy symbols.

The Hunger Games Trilogy is a popular book series by Suzanne Collins. The series is about a dystopian society, made up of twelve districts, a capital and one secret underground city in the place of a no longer existing district. Every year the capital picks two children, one boy and one girl, from each district, in what is called “the reaping.” The kids are between the ages of twelve and eighteen. The twenty-four children are set up to fight to the death in an arena.

The main character is Katniss Everdeen. She is best friends with Gale Hawthorne. They go out to hunt together when they need food. Gale wants to run away with Katniss on the day of the reaping, to get away from the society that kills children for entertainment and pleasure. At the reaping, Katniss’s sister Primrose is chosen; Katniss volunteers in her place. Peeta Mellark is chosen in the boy’s place. At the end of the first book, the capital decides that a pair of children from a district can win. Both Peeta and Katniss survive, but when the capital goes back on its decision, Katniss and Peeta decide to kill themselves.  Right before they do, the capital declares them the winners. This sparks a rebellion and the start of the second book of the series, Catching Fire.

In book two, the capital decides to put only the victors of previous games into the choosing pot instead of new tributes. So Katniss, Peeta and their trainer Haymitch Abernathy are the only ones in the choosing pot. Katniss, being the only female victor from district twelve is picked and Peeta volunteers for Haymitch, who is getting old. Once in the arena, they notice that it is a clock and that every hour in a different section of the arena there is a different disaster. At the end, Katniss ends the games by shooting an arrow into the force field around the arena. It is connected to a wire that is about to be electrified by the lightning tree which is the 12:00 disaster, which causes the arena to collapses. This causes the capital to firebomb district twelve and start the full-on rebellion. This sets up book three, Mockingjay.

In book three Mockingjay, Katniss and her family move to the underground city of district  thirteen where Katniss joins the war and acts in “propos,” video propaganda that is streamed through regular television programs using hacks. While Katniss is doing this, Peeta is in captivity and being tortured by the capital to go against Katniss. The ending is not entirely happy but satisfying.

I really liked this series because the action never seems to stop. The suspense is also a major positive, because it makes things more believable in some cases. The details were good because the books told us, not just about violence, but also about nature-inflicted dangers of the games; for instance hunger, thirst and fatigue.   

I would recommend this to people ages 11 and up because of violence that may not be suitable for younger people. Readers who like stories like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the Olympians will enjoy the Hunger Games. An overall rating for this series is 8 out of 10.