The Hunger Games

Book(s): The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins

When I finished Mockingjay, the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy (thank you, Su Ping!), my first thought was: it's not a romance. I suppose you can say it's not meant to be anyway, what with it being dystopian YA and people concentrating on staying alive and everything. But adventure fiction often incorporates romantic elements into its plot (there's nothing more universal for readers than love and sex and the pursuit thereof after all), so it's not impossible, and they always do it when there's a female lead. Plus, it's YA. How can you not have romance in YA, where you have hormone-riddled teenagers for your characters AND your target audience? So whether it's realistic is debatable, but it's been done.

Decades ago, the thirteen Districts of Panem rose up in rebellion against the Capitol and lost, with the Capitol completely obliterating one of them. The Hunger Games were then created. The Hunger Games is an entertainment held by the Capitol each year, in which every District has to send two tributes aged 12-18 to battle it out in an arena on a nation-wide broadcast. The prize is untold glory and wealth, and the winner is the last person alive. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen from District 12 sees her younger, gentle sister get picked out of a lottery of names to participate in the Hunger Games, the logical thing to do, the only thing to do, is to volunteer to take her place. That's the basic premise. Aren't you feeling all warm and fuzzy already?

Back to the not-romance in the series. Featuring a love triangle notwithstanding -- an actual one, not a faux one that only serves to divide up its fanbase (looking at you Twilight), Katniss goes through much of the books being pretty much romantically indifferent to both of the guys, and I was half-convinced she would end up not picking anyone at all (now wouldn't that be one hell of a subversion). Of course this being YA, she has to. But when she does, her final decision is just as rooted in practicality as all her dealings with the two love interests in the past three books have been. I thought that was actually quite in character for her, as Katniss has never been sentimental. It's not that she doesn't care, because she does. She just doesn't love passionately or irrationally, which is the stuff starry-eyed romances are made of.

In a lot of romance in fiction, there needs to be conflict for there to be a story, so you often see heroes and heroines falling for each other despite the occasionally frequent hostile reception they get. Katniss just doesn't deal with that sort of drama. If someone (a guy) dislikes her, then she's just not going to like him either. I personally think that's more realistic. After all, we associate people with how they make us feel. But of course, I haven't factored in sexual attraction, which was barely examined in the Hunger Games. I also wondered if maybe Katniss isn't the victim of an attempt to create a 'strong' female, to the point of burying her emotions (in addition to being stupidly reckless, but let's stick to the topic at hand) -- the same pitfalls that face so many Urban Fantasy heroines. But despite being part of a common character archetype, Katniss came off as a genuine enough personality and she never made me roll my eyes, so I guess it worked.

I had my reservations about this series after the first book, because I didn't think it delivered on the angst and psychological ramifications its premise offered, and I wasn't too enchanted with Katniss (although I really liked Peeta). I wasn't a fan of Katniss's voice, but the characters were engaging enough and Katniss grew on me. That kind of sums up my reaction to the entire series -- it grew on me. As for the angst, boy, the last book more than makes up for it. There are so many things in these books I could talk about; this rambling is really just a small offshoot at the forefront of my mind, and even then I couldn't do it justice because the problem with delay between books is that I forget a lot of the smaller details and miss out on subsequent ones. Ah well, that's what re-reads are for.

Still not very partial to the world-building though. It's not that there wasn't any, because there was plenty, but I just didn't fall in love with it (I attribute this to the author's voice). It didn't engender any sense of fascination in me like 1984 or Bujold does. I'm not sure if that's a question of ideas or execution, so feel free to take this with a grain of salt. Of course, while I didn't love it, it was entertaining and I liked it a lot. I liked Katniss eventually. Hence, if you're looking for nothing too psychologically thrilling or littered with he-loves-me-he-loves-me-not angst, you might like this one.