The Hunger Games

It seems the Hunger Games has been gaining a lot of popularity lately, at least in the Internet circles I'm a part of anyway. I've never know very much about it but it always sounded quite interesting. Now it's "Soon to be a major motion picture" so I decided it was time for me to catch and see what this was all about instead of waiting until years later like I did with Harry Potter.

The Hunger Games is a trilogy of books by Suzanne Collins. They're young adult science fiction set a in future North America, although it's not called that anymore. Once a year as a method of keeping the people under control 24 children (between 12-18) are thrown in to a battle to the death, broadcast live on TV. This is similar to another film/novel Battle Royale from Japan. Battle Royale came first in 1999, The Hunger Games was first published in 2008. I've only seen the film Battle Royale not read the book so any comparisons I make are to the film. The thing is though, aside from the children battling to the death aspect they are quite different. The worlds in which they're set are very different or so I thought. It seems there is a large part of the Internet that disagrees with me and calls it a complete rip-off. I only found that part of the web while researching for this post though. There are plenty of people who liked the books and didn't mind and similarities, myself included. At least compared to the Battle Royale film there is one thing The Hunger Games does much better and that is it gives you a much better idea of the outside world, how it works and the reason for the games. Battle Royale takes place almost entirely in the arena but only about a third of the Hunger Games does. There's a lot more of the modern Big Brother aspect to the Hunger Games as well with more emphasis on the television broadcasts and interviews.

I found the book to be extremely compelling and got through it in only a couple of days and then went straight on to book two which I'll talk about tomorrow. Katniss is a great character and I can understand why it's become so popular. I wasn't really getting excited for the film before, but I am now. I also glad that I hadn't bothered watching the trailer before reading the books as well, although I had seen a couple of pictures, so there was nothing to taint my imagination.