Reviews Literature / The Hunger Games

Flawed, but interesting

I like this series, but I almost started hating it after the hype over the movie began. I felt like everyone was gushing about how wonderful a couple Katniss and Peeta make, how much of a strong heroine Katniss is, and how beautiful Finnick and Annie are together. I don't agree with any of this. If Peeta and Katniss were gender switched, both characters would be much less likable. A boy who is brooding and angsty, yet very capable in battle, who gets together with a girl who cares about nothing but the boy? Sound familiar? Katniss in particular is a hard character to like. You know that she's supposed to be tough, but she comes across as a little whiny at times, and her only truly heroic moment was volunteering for Prim in the first book. Everything else she does is motivated by either selfishness or revenge, and by the last book, she's driven completely insane with PTSD. Not the most heroic of characters. Her narration is especially annoying. It's melodramatic and full of angst, but there isn't much substance to it, and you can never tell what she's really thinking, which makes some of the plot twists in Mockingjay seem out of place.

However, if you look past all of this, it's a great series. I love how the books increase in scale and ambition with each successive book. The first is pretty black and white, the second gets more complex with the character backstories, and the third goes all out with Grey And Grey Morality and turns the series into a cautionary tale of sorts. I love Gale in particular. He starts out as a very bitter character who would do anything for freedom and develops into a very morally interesting character in Mockingjay, where he's willing to commit atrocities in order to win the war. Then there's the Capitol, which I love, and District Thirteen, which I also love.

Overall, if you can get past the Fan Dumb and the writing style, it's quite enjoyable, if extremely dark and cynical.