The Hunger Games [Hardcover]

The Hunger Games is on the way to our big screens (23 March in the UK and US) and therefore I thought it only right and proper to do what I should do more often when a movie comes out that's based on a book - read the book. I have the best intentions to read the trilogy in its entirety before the release because I suspect that there may be borrowings from Catching Fire and Mockingjay in the film adaptation but so far I have just read the one that people are talking about an awful lot - The Hunger Games.

In a near and dark future the bit of our world that we know as North America is now Panem. At its centre is The Capitol and around it are 12 Districts, each devoted to a different industry (such as mining or farming). But once there were was a District 13. This District was destroyed in an uprising against the President and his controllers. The result of this rebellion is that each year the remaining Districts must watch a son and a daughter fight to the death in front of their eyes in some kind of obscene reality television show called The Hunger Games. Two children, aged between 12 and 18, are put into an artificial environment, given limited weapons and food, and are aggravated and teased and prodded and goaded into slaughtering the others - or at least those who do not die of hunger or dehydration or mishap - until just one survives. This entertainment has been crafted with rituals and careful design into something appallingly oppressive yet ornate that mocks the fact that its victims are young and frightened children.

Our heroine is 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen from the grottiest and poorest of the Districts, the twelfth. She is placed into the Games not because her name was called in the lottery but because the name that was called was that of her 12-year-old sister. Katniss protects her family and is its provider, illicitly hunting outside the District's wire and scraping at survival. It's inconceivable that this brave girl wouldn't protect her sister now. The boy who is called with her to `play' is Peeta, whom, it turns out, is a boy who once saved Katniss' life. And so begins the Hunger Games, as we see it through the detailed, evocative and frighteningly grown up narrative of Katniss.

The Hunger Games is essentially a novel in three parts: the run up to the Games, the Games themselves and their conclusion. We shift between District 12, with its soot-faced mining occupants and its hungry inhabitants, to the Capitol with its extravagant foods, rooms, trains and clothes. Finally, there is the artificial environment of the Games themselves, populated by the 24 youngsters and whatever other beings the Gamemakers introduce to stir things up a bit.

For me, the most interesting part of the novel wasn't the Games, which I didn't think went dark enough despite the horrors, but the world that Suzanne Collins has created here, with the Districts, the Capitol and its uneasy, sometimes voiceless inhabitants. The Games are just one element of a truly fascinating, well-evoked and quite alarming vision of the future where it's almost as if the parents have given up.

The Hunger Games is an excellent novel. It may sound long at over 450 pages but these are swift and fast and they rush past the eyes. The excitement never lets up and when it finally ends you'll be glad that there are another two novels to go in the trilogy. I am a big fan of Young Adult dystopian fiction and, while this isn't my favourite, it is certainly a novel I recommend to all ages, not least because we will soon see it brought to the big screen. Suzanne Collins has seen the finished film and, from the sound of it, it delivered with Jennifer Lawrence (X-Men: First Class) doing a fine job bringing Katniss to life. But before you enjoy that, I urge you to enjoy the book.

Ever since Harry Potter, I have spent my time trying to find books with characters I love as though they were my own friends, and with a plot so real that I felt it could actually be happening. Most books disappoint me in this area and I've had to settle for a lot of mediocrity. But not this time. Hunger Games drew me so far into its world I didn't want to leave!

Hunger Games is set in the future where North America has been turned into a country called Panem, separated into 12 districts and the Capitol. As if constant hunger wasn't bad enough, the districts are constantly reminded of the "Dark Days", when they rebelled against the Capitol, by punishing their children in the Hunger Games. Every year each District must send one boy and one girl to the Capitol to take part in these Games where they must fight each other to their deaths. The winner is the child who comes out alive, having presumably killed all the others. The Hunger Games is reality TV at its very extreme; mere entertainment for the wealthy and pampered residents of the Captitol, but torturous for the Districts, who have to watch their children year by year go off to the Capitol to be killed.

This book starts on the day of the Reeping, where the teenagers who will enter the Games are chosen at random throughout the districts. We follow Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl of District 12. Katniss has been scarred deeply by the death of her father in a mining disaster several years ago and since then has been breaking the laws of Panem by hunting animals in the forest in order to feed her starving family. You can't help but feel for Katniss, who has lost so much and tries so hard to care for her family, and when her little sister Prim is chosen in the Reeping, you can understand why she volunteers to take her place. And so the story follows her, along with fellow District 12 Tribute Peeta, as they head off to the luxurious Capitol, and finally head into the Hunger Games where you will be unable to put the book down, waiting to see if/how Katniss will survive.

This might all sound a bit morbid and violent and that was definitely a big concern for me when the concept of the Games was first introduced. But I read on anyway and was pleased discover that it was written so well that it didn't feel morbid at all. Yes, people died and yes the idea of the games is horrific. But it's not written in a way that makes you feel sick; instead you follow Katniss as her mind gradually opens to the idea that the world she lives in is highly unfair. It's not a constant bloodbath where murder is just something you have to do; anyone that Katniss kills, she does so with a heavy heart and realises quite quickly the awful consequences of taking someone's life. It also relates to so many aspects of our own world, and it's not a far stretch to imagine some time in the distant future a society like this, so instead of it being a morbid tale of death and injustice, it's actually incredibly telling about the world in which we live.

All of this is brightened up with light-hearted moments and some brilliant characters: I loved Cinna, the stylist, who is incredibly creative; I enjoyed drunken Haymitch, the only Tribute from District 12 who ever came back alive, who is enlisted to help Katniss and Peeta and has a hidden depth that may surprise you; Peeta brings a certain amount of humour to the story, but also a wisdom that is beyond Katniss. Add to that Career Tributes, from Districts 1, 2, and 4 who have spent their lives training for the Games and see it as a great honour; a would-be love-triangle; and a main character you will feel for not because she's pathetic or a damsel in distress character - she's neither of these things, but because she is feisty and fighting so hard to find justice in a world that has little, you can't help but hope she succeeds.

So what with the characters I felt I knew personally, a plot that seemed so real I came out of the book in a daze, and enough pace and action to keep me wanting more, I found myself reading this book at every possible moment and hating every second I spent away from it! Absolutely brilliant book that I didn't want to finish, and I look forward to seeing the film adaptation next year!

This time last week I had not heard of the Hunger Games trilogy. I was happy and content in my oblivious state too but it all changed very quickly! My Facebook page went Crazy on Saturday with talk about the movie and how fantastic it was, how it was true to the books and generally there was a buzz in the virtual atmosphere! My curiousity was aroused and I googled "Hunger Games", saw there were books available and so downloaded the first to my Kindle.

I started reading the first book on Sunday morning and by Sunday night I had completely devoured it. My housework did not get completed and dinner was more than a bit late. Where on earth was this series hiding and why had I not heard of it before now?

The whole story is so well thought out, rounded characters, brilliant use of the English Language, imaginative and simply an enthralling pleasure to read. Don't be fooled that these books are aimed at Teens - I'm 32 and loved it. I loved it so much that I downloaded the other two books in the series immediately - I had to find out what happens to the characters and follow them on their quest. I had a bit of a late night Sunday and then during my hour lunch break for the next couple of days finished the second book which is just as captivating. I'm starting the third tonight, but am sure I will be sad to see it end.

If you only read one book this year, please make it this one - you really won't be disappointed. I can't stop raving about these books to my friends and colleagues and I had to come on here and write a review to tell you to read it too!