The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games is an interesting story from a first person present point-of-view of Katniss Everdeen, a teenage girl from a coal-mining district. Katniss is established as a tough, Bear Grylls kind of girl with a fierce loyalty to her little sister and bottomless distrust of her unstable mother. There are moments when Katniss is inconsistent and waivers, but overall the story uneasily stands on its own two feet. The first third of the book could have been half as long but establishes the supporting cast fairly well. The garbled shreds of quasi-relationship between Gale and Katniss was weak sauce at best and could have been easily cut without altering the rest of the book. Somehow, the dynamic between Katniss and Peeta doesn't become too contrived or mushy for too long. Clearly, the strongest part of the book, the meat of the story, are the games themselves, although this book fights hard not to disintegrate into unrecoverable teen drama. I hope the next installment will be lighter on the repetitive lists of foodstuffs and dinner scenes, when the most important conversations during the Games happen away from the table. My love for Koushun Takami's Battle Royale will keep me invested in Katniss' struggle against The Capitol in hopes that the story will continue to claw itself farther away from young adult and into something more.