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The Hunger Games Series by Suzanne Collins


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I bought ''The Hunger Games'' Trilogy Boxed Set and I'm loving it. The story is well written and it has everything to make it the most difficult book to put down. It's ''unputdownable''.

100% of Recommendation!

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I liked the film very much, but the book is waaaaaaaay better.

For me, one of the best scenes in the book is when Katniss gets the mockingjay pin, and the way they did it on the film was lame!

Also, the trailer and the promotional things shows the film way more romantic than it is in reality.

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  • 2 weeks later...

‎'The Hunger Games' (Book #1 of 'The Hunger Games' trilogy).

 

This book is pretty good. I loved it. It's both exciting and thrilling. I started reading it and I couldn't stop until I was finished.

It somehow makes us to actually care about what will happen to the main characters. It's probably because of the well written plot and the character's personality and actions during the games. At first instance, you just want Katniss and Peeta to leave the arena and win the games, but later on you realise their problems will get much worse than that. It's a must-read!

 

I'm currently reading the second book of 'The Hunger Games' trilogy - 'Catching Fire'.

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I usually try to stay away from YA because I read to learn, either history, vocabulary or whatever, and I don't get that from this genre. But I also have a strict 'never watch a movie based on a book without reading the book first' personal policy. So when the trailer came out, I was intrigued. I have to say I was so wrapped up in this series (I finished all three books in five days) I'm going to give YA another shot. Maybe I don't learn as much, but dang if it's not entertaining!

 

And I still haven't seen the movie yet.. Not sure I want to anymore, the book is always better right?

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I absolutely LOVED the books. I was surprised at the depth of story for a YA book, I hope that doesn't offend anyone.

 

What I have learned to do when it comes to reading books that are movies or will be movies I try to think of them as two separate things. What is really comes down to is a generic story where the characters aren't gone into with much depth but a lot of pretty great action scenes (the movie), and a heartfelt novel where you are in the characters head and you feel like you know them as family (book). To me it seems like a completely different story.

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'Catching Fire' (Book #2 of 'The Hunger Games' trilogy).

 

This book is more than perfect. It's full of mysteries, surprises, happy and sad moments and of course, plenty of exciting happenings.

While you read through the chapters, you don't realize what's gonna happen next. You ask yourself: What's this book gonna be about if there's supposedly no more hunger games for Katniss to be put into? And then, again, you get caught with your mouth opened when you find out what.

The exciting happening about the first book was about the hunger games, in the second book there's much more than that. The games is only one third of the book. The book is perfectly written, the new characters are well placed into the story and you feel happy and/or sad when stuff happens to them. I could only care for some characters of the first book, now reading the second book I started caring and feeling deeply concerned about other characters's lives.

The first happenings of the book makes you feel worried about Katniss and people around her. Later on you realize there's much more for you to worry.

Suzanne Collins is totally a new icon of the literature for me. What she's done is not just a book, it's a story to be placed on our hearts and never be forgotten.

'Catching Fire' is by far the best book of this trilogy.

PS: I don't know about the last one, I haven't read it yet.

 

I'll start reading 'Mockingjay' in a few hours.

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This book is more than perfect.

I thought Catching Fire was the weakest in the series; it was just a rehash of the first book. Only in the last 10 pages does any plot development happen, really, and by that time it was too late.

 

Then again, I'm someone who really thought Mockingjay was the best book in the series and thought it was ended perfectly, which isn't an opinion shared by most, so...

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, I recently finished the first book, I'm tired, not able to concentrate properly, so enjoy my rambling. Also, spoiler warnings thrown around in areas I think might be spoilers. I'm always awful at detecting what could be classified as a spoiler, so I'm just being safe here :P

 

Can't help but say I was kind of underwhelmed by Hunger Games. I enjoyed the stuff at the beginning. The first chapter made me fall in love with the book with how I came to understand the entire world within such a short period of time, and as it went on I was enjoying myself. I have to admit I was starting to get a bit bored with how everything was dragging out before the actual Hunger Games but I knew I'd get Battle Royale-esque escapades coming up.

 

And then the Hunger Games started and I just found everything a bit dull. Everything happened far too quickly, with too much bad stuff happening to Katniss within a few chapters. It started getting ridiculous the amount of times she had stuff flying at her. It seemed that Collins tried getting all of the horrible things out of the way to build up a

bland (possible) romance with some bland guy, creating a bland love triangle which appears out of place, especially at the beginning of Catching Fire (only read the first 7 chapters). The love stuff is just so out of place, in my eyes, and ruins the strong character of Katniss and the pacing of the book.

But Collins seems to have some issue with pacing, going from super speedy to boringly.

 

Regardless, I did kind of enjoy it, but I found it so dull at times. I was constantly wishing for things to happen.

 

One of the things I think that could have been improved is a bit more focus on the action. I didn't really feel the tension as most of the time she was on her own.

Keep more people alive, have more encounters,

increase the dread. Instead I was just thinking "Yeah, she'll be fine!" which, in a book like this, should not be what I am thinking. I should be wanting her to be fine against all odds. Instead, she has

fire thrown at her and is poisoned but comes out all OK!

 

 

The lack of threat could have been due to the fact that we didn't spend much time with other characters.

Cato never seemed to be enough of a threat, just kind of there looking for her and not doing much. Thresh was nothing, Foxface had a couple of cameos, the Careers... existed, I guess, and everyone else didn't matter.

Deaths had no real impact. This, of course, comes from the fact that the book is written in first person, which meant Katniss couldn’t see everything else. But if maybe we heard about what awful things happened then maybe I could care more.

 

 

Thresh’s death seemed to cheat us of a good fight scene as it was done off screen. Did it take its toll on Cato? Did Thresh fight valiantly? Was he overcome with rage? What happened?!

 

 

And the ending was all kind of... what? I mean... what?

What was with the muttations?

I hope they get explained later in the books, because that bit seemed to completely jump the shark. Not that anyone questioned it, really.

 

Though, it’s not like anyone questioned anything. So often I thought Katniss would ask questions, to find things out

(mostly asking Peeta why the hell he was with the Careers)

but nope. She doesn’t. Instead she just blindly goes along with everything in ignorance, not even caring to wonder after Collins is done with that bit of the book.

 

 

Oh, and am I the only one who thinks Rue didn’t get enough time in the book for us to form an emotional attachment to her? She was just there one minute, then she was gone.

 

 

But yeah, those are my rambling thoughts on it. No editing done there, bar spoilers, to really make this make sense, but hopefully it does. So tired, so it probably reads horribly. Like I said, I still enjoyed the book, I just have a lot of issues with the latter parts of the book.

 

EDIT: Just looked at this with all the spoiler warnings. It looks horrible! Looked all lovely in my Word document...

Edited by Lord Napsack
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Double post time!

 

So, I just finished Catching Fire and do you know what I did when I finished it? I threw the book away. Not in a bin, but I literally threw the book away. I tossed it aside because that book was not at all to my liking. Seriously, I was bored throughout the majority of the book, but forced myself through it because I have already got the third book and I have got this far, so I may as well continue.

 

So, what were my issues with the book? Well, there’s a few things. Content-wise I found the book bland and dull. I spent the first two thirds of the book guessing most of the twists the books tried to set up, but they were all so obvious, and when the twist at the end of the second third came along I had already guessed it nearly 100 pages ago.

 

Things did pick up by the last third, but that didn’t help too much. The dynamic of having all of the characters did make things a lot more interesting, but it didn’t help too well as I definitely think Collins has a big issue with the book’s pacing. I noticed the book was rapidly coming to a close and nothing had exactly happened.

 

The semi-love triangle business near the start irritated me to no end and made me think Katniss was now more concerned with what the boys will be thinking. The boys are both so bland that it’s hard to care about any of them.

 

Oh, and I have absolutely no idea why the Capitol would

put someone who causes the rumblings of revolution is the public eye so consistently. I could understand if they did it with strict regulations and complete and utter control, but they don't.

How the Capitol became this powerful I will never know as they make some of the worst decisions to control their populous.

 

But what irked me the most about this book has to be what happened to Katniss. Oh, Katniss, you were, for the most part, a strong female lead. What happened to you?

 

Throughout the entire book Katniss doesn’t do anything for herself. As I said, she constantly seemed to be concerned with what the guy’s thought of her. On top of that, she doesn’t actually make any decisions, just has everyone do everything for her. I feel this may have been thematic, that she is a pawn in everyone else’s fight, but it came across as a sight-seeing tour. We weren’t following what the character is doing, just being shown what they see.

 

I really feel that Collins messed up big time with this book. It was dull and made me lament for the death of characterisation. Things happened, but there was no emotional weight to it. In my previous post you will notice I asked a lot of questions. Well this time I haven’t asked any non-rhetorical questions because there’s nothing to ask. It all felt like it was going through motions rather than telling the deep, insightful story it thinks it is telling.

 

I really hope Mockingjay does something different, because the familiarity of the last third of the book left me irritated. Give me something to care about and I might enjoy the last book, because, as you can probably tell, I didn’t enjoy Catching Fire at all.

Edited by Lord Napsack
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  • 2 weeks later...

So, I finished Mockingjay. I'll be honest, I was kinda pumped for it. I was told a lot of the issues I had with the previous book, Catching Fire would be dealt with and the thought that maybe we'd finally get some good action as well as an in depth look at this dystopia kept me going.

 

I'll be honest, for all I've said about the Hunger Games trilogy I think the setting is pretty good. I like me some dystopian future and I think the general vagueness helps the general setting. On top of that it's something I can honestly believe happening and taking place, with its elements of politics and science fiction. From the very start I've always imagined it to be kinda like the film Zardoz in some strange way. To some this would be a down side, but I really enjoyed Zardoz and imagining a giant floating head instead of the hoverplanes makes me chuckle.

 

But this world is completely squandered. Collins has the framework of a brilliant future and uses it to tell a pretty crappy story. In Mockingjay we get have the rebellion against the Capitol finally happen. This is great. We should see the war, the battles, the effect it has on the people, the Districts, the toll it takes on the main characters, the Capitol showing fear as everything they have held for so long crumbles around them.

 

Do we get this? No, we just get Katniss complaining and being a pawn in everyone's schemes. This being a pawn would be fine if she we coherent and consistent, but she doesn't seem to have any particular character. Her decisions often make little sense, and that's only when she is making decisions, which is still pretty rare. She's a chore to follow as a protagonist, caring more about silly things rather than things that actually matter (this should read as "All she cares about is the boys").

 

I could never tell you what the actual plot of the book is. There's a revolution going on, but the book has so little to do with the revolution. Most of the revolution is over by the time Katniss starts doing anything in particular and the final assault on the Capitol is dealt with so quickly it may as well not even be in there.

 

We also have the character deaths. Why are they there if Collins is never going to focus on them?

Rue's death in the first book help so much more weight than any death in this book.

People die quickly, a sentence or two is focussed on them, and then the book continues from there. Even when really important characters die it's barely focussed upon.

 

The one that irritated me the most was when

Prim

died as basically no time was spent on that and you'd have thought that this would be a big thing that they really cared about. But it doesn't particularly matter, apparently, even though it should shake Katniss to her very core. Sure, you could interpret some of the later parts as her being distraught because of what happened, but it never really felt that way to me.

 

Oh, and don't get me started on how rushed that ending was. It just... it just weees me off that much.

 

But this is something I've been saving up from when I read this part of the book. I've bookmarked it.

 

"But I don't know what to tell him about the aftermath of killing a person. About how they never leave you."

 

At no point throughout the books has Katniss ever shown that she is haunted by killing that first person. She shot them without thinking and only mentioned later "Oh, my, I appear to have killed someone. How about that, eh? Oh well, anyway..." I mean, did Suzanne Collins even check to see if she even mentioned anything about this in previous books? This is why Katniss is such a confusing, convoluted mess of a character. She has no character and seems to be purely built out of what Collins was thinking of putting in at the time.

 

I really had to force my way through this book. I pushed my way through, hoping for something good to happen but nothing happened. I was excited for the action near the end, but didn't get it. I wanted something from this book, but didn't get anything. I have left this trilogy feeling pretty damn annoyed. I don't understand why people love these books so much or think they are so great. There is so much wrong with them, from a story telling perspective, a characterisation perspective or even from the actual structure of the writing (which I've decided to not comment because I don't want to go into that level of pedantry).

 

This is all such a shame. I was so hopeful when I started this series. I loved the start of the first book and thought the writing was excellent, but everything just fell apart from then onwards. I know people enjoy these books, but I find it hard to understand why, especially when there are so many better written books out there that haven't received the same amount of hype. Maybe it's my own loss, who knows, but I know for certain that I won't pick up anything else Suzanne Collins writes. Though I might watch those episodes of Clarissa Explains It All that she wrote on. That was a good show...

Edited by Kylie
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I've now read good and bad reviews on this series and I've began to wonder; is this the same as the Da Vinci Code and Twilight hype? Because those books did not live up to their respective hypes at all. Or are they more like Tomorrow When The War Began series who were not fantastically written but very enjoyable non the less?

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Many people on here read and loved them before they became popular, myself included. (In fact I'm glad I did, because I tend to shy away from hyped books!) I do wonder if people now have unrealistic expectations because they're so popular.

 

I also wonder if it's been forgotten that these were written as Young Adult books. This isn't to say in any way that YA books are inferior (I read tons of YA these days) but they are written to appeal to a certain group of people. Maybe if it had been written by someone else, with a more general audience in mind, it may have come across differently.

 

I'm not entirely sure, but I will say that I read the trilogy, and also listened to it on audio, and I rarely re-read. I loved the concepts, the characters and the development.

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I was a massive fan of The Hunger Games and thought the concept was unique in that it had a reason behind the games, rather than a group wishing to see a second kill one another. I loved that Katniss was flawed, she wasn't a 'Bella Swan' type that was an over-hyped Mary Sue, if you like. Coupled with Haymitch and Peeta's lack of perfection, I thought the character development was brilliant. Collins' ability to convey emotion and have Katniss change due to experience was, to me, one of the major selling points of the first novel. However, I think Catching Fire and Mockingjay failed to live up to the expectation that The Hunger Games produced. I didn't like the writing style though, I'm not a fan of the 'in the present' style that Collins developed.

 

I won't go into too much detail as to why Catching Fire wasn't my cup of tea as to be honest, I can't really remember. Mockingjay, on the other hand, had a single flaw that resulted in my clouded judgement. The ending. I haven't read a book with a more contrived, unoriginal, completely out-of-character finale.

With all the death surrounding Katniss, her decision not to bring children into the world was a character trait rarely seen in YA books and I truly respected Collins for that, it was well explained and well documented throughout the series. Katniss was an incredibly strong, independent girl, I couldn't see her changing one of her most stringent views without any major explanation. Also, Gale's disappearance? Need I say more. Yes, from those I've spoken to, Peeta was favoured as Katniss' partner. but to remove his opposition so swiftly? Not a fan of this particular decision.

 

 

In my opinion, Collins should have left The Hunger Games as a standalone novel, or spent more time determining a less contrived overall ending.

Edited by Kylie
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It's been a year since I finished reading the series, and although I remember The Hunger Games really clearly (and I haven't seen the film yet, so that isn't the reason), I can only vaguely remember Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I know I enjoyed them enough at the time, albeit not as much as the first book, but I can genuinely recall very little of the stories, and I'm struggling to remember how the series finally ended, if I'm honest. I did think at the time, though, that I would have been happy if it had stayed as a single standalone book.

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Yes, from those I've spoken to, Peeta was favoured as Katniss' partner. but to remove his opposition so swiftly? Not a fan of this particular decision.

 

I must have one of the strangest views on who she should have chosen.

 

No one.

 

 

I just think there was no need for it in the ending and living the rest of her life without children and on her own would have suited her better. Maybe she'd look after others and try to make the world better, but I never saw her as wanting to be with anyone as EVERYONE AROUND HER SUFFERED! You know, that would kinda sting. Especially with the crap she put Peeta through anyway and the fact that she would most likely continue to be haunted by the way he was in Mockingjay for the rest of her life. She'd never be able to look at him in the same way.

 

 

Though, if Collins knew how to pace a novel she could, I dunno, maybe let us see how they became close again and got over those problems. But no, Collins never focuses on the right things and minces around big issues.

 

I've really come to detest these novels in a way. It's weird...

Edited by Kylie
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I must have one of the strangest views on who she should have chosen.

 

No one.

 

This. I totally agree, or perhaps controversially, was the epilogue necessary? Why not just end it where it should have ended, after the overthrowing. There was no need to tie it all up so neatly. But I do also share these ideas regarding Harry Potter so it may just be a case of my hatred of epilogues...

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Can everyone please remember to use spoiler tags when discussing these books. We don't want them spoiled for those who haven't read them!

 

I've now read good and bad reviews on this series and I've began to wonder; is this the same as the Da Vinci Code and Twilight hype? Because those books did not live up to their respective hypes at all. Or are they more like Tomorrow When The War Began series who were not fantastically written but very enjoyable non the less?

 

Yay you for reading one of my favourite series! :D I guess you could say The Hunger Games trilogy is similar to the Tomorrow series in that they are both well written from a young adult point of view and the plots are quite gripping. I thoroughly enjoyed both series, although Tomorrow is probably my sentimental favourite. There's more character development in the Tomorrow series, which is understandable because it focuses more on the small world of the teenagers, whereas The Hunger Games is broader in scope.

 

I definitely recommend that you give The Hunger Games ago, but go into it with low expectations and you will surely not be disappointed. :)

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