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The Hunger Games trilogy
I finished this a couple weeks ago. The short version is, I had too many problems with this series to really like it. My favorite things about it were the pacing of the first book and Katniss. My least favorite things were the pacing of the other books and clumsily handled themes. Below are lists of likes and dislikes about the book, with explanations. If all you want to read about The Hunger Games is squee, I suggest you stop when you get to the section labelled "dislikes".
Spoilers galore.
Likes
-Katniss. Katniss was exciting to me, because I feel like I haven't often seen a heroine who had trouble expressing or sometimes even feeling emotion. The warrior heroines you sometimes see sometimes struggle between their masculine and feminine sides, and I really appreciate the Katniss's problems weren't expressed that way.
There are hardly ever heroines like this. Heroes are the Broody Dark Types who have trouble with Feelings, and have heroines who Love Them and Teach Them To Be Human. God, please, give me a story where a girl is an emotional fuckwit and the man by her side is this utterly loving, gentle baker who shames her all the time with his humanity. I love that Katniss is the warrior and Peeta is the heart, and I don't care if Katniss is rather poorly drawn (I'll get to that later); I love the sole fact that it exists.
-the Gale/Peeta dilemma. The dilemma is a little annoying (more on that later), but I loved it in the first two books. Not only am I tired of heroines who are always the heart and sole support of their Man, I'm also tired of Fated Relationships always working out In The End. I just . . . it's this thing in fantasy and fairytales and romcom and no doubt YA, where if Person A is forced into some kind of romantic situation with Person B, People A and B are going to fall in love with each other. And they're going to say, "lol! Remember how we were forced together? Good times. But without us being kidnapped and tortured together, we never would've hooked up! Ain't life grand?" and it's stupid. Fate doesn't always tie you up with someone you can fall in love with. You can't always love the one you're with. So I wanted Katniss to actually get a chance to have Gale be in the picture.
Also, she's 16. In books like Harry Potter lives always have to be mapped out by the age of 16; you have to have who you're going to marry all lined up for you. Heaven forbid Ginny Weasley actually realize that she didn't want the boy she dreamed of when she was 11. Of course, it is all resolved by book 3 (more on that later).
-for that matter: the idea of Gale. I just loved the fact that the childhood friend was a love interest, that Katniss's history didn't seem to begin with the book. Girls-next-door can be love interests, but boys-next-door so often must be sidekicks while our heroines wait for someone new and magical and exciting to sweep them off their feet. For some reason, the examples I'm thinking of are Tor in Hero and the Crown and Ducky in Pretty In Pink. Nor is Peeta at all the sparkly, popular kid, blue-veined immortal like Edward or whoever the main guy is in Pretty or Luthe. But I loved that the girl-torn-between-two-guys wasn't at all like the triangle typified by Hero and the Crown and blown out of all proportion by Twilight.
So, I liked the idea of Gale. In Book 1, I didn't feel like he got enough screen time to really show who he was. I had such confidence that we were going to find out more about him. Obviously, Katniss had this whole history with him that just wasn't revealed in Book 2. I thought we were going to see why she became friends with him, and in Book 2 we started to, although it didn't have as much of him as I would have liked. It showed that he was quiet, and brave, and loved Katniss very much. It also showed that he was revolutionary, and I sort of thought that he and Peeta and Katniss would be this triumvirate of awesome that would lead the fight. Like, Peeta had the words and the compassion, but Gale has a determination and a hatred and a hardness the other two don't have, and Katniss has the fierceness and the loyalty and the figurehead thing going to fill out the rest.
-Peeta. I don't know how anyone couldn't love Peeta, so maybe this doesn't merit much discussion. I love that he's a baker, I love that he's such a great speaker, I love his love for Katniss, I love his compassion. I love the way he painted himself in the mud. I was a little confused by him joining the Careers. I know it was to protect Katniss, but er . . . what would he have done if they had lit upon Katniss in a different situation and all four of them were trying to kill her at once? It would've been a better idea for him to just try to convince her to form an alliance with him from the get-go. Of course then it wouldn't have been as dramatic.
-Rue. I don't feel that Rue was really fleshed out, but unlike some other supporting characters, I feel it sort of worked. She was like a series of beautiful sketches. I don't have a very visual imagination, and yet I feel like I can see her (even though I don't really). My favorite is a really strong image of her in my head, where she's in a tree looking dark and silently at Katniss, and slowly her hand comes up to point at the trackerjackers. I don't think that scene was written in a particularly compelling way or anything, but there was just something so quiet and eerie about it that stuck with me. I cried when she died--not when she got shot, or Katniss sang to her, or covered her in flowers, but when her District sent the bread. It was their loyalty that really got me.
-some plot elements that go straight to my kinks. Brainwashing: just the fact of it. In fact, there was one super compelling plot element that just excited me to know end each time. In the first book, it was the Hunger Game itself. In the second book, it was that whole tension between what Katniss felt, and what she had to pretend to feel for the cameras. I'm a sucker for that ridiculous we-have-to-pretend-to-be-a-couple stuff. I read it all the time in fanfic, but I hadn't read a good pro-fic one in ages!
-pacing of The Hunger Games. I read this book in one day. I couldn't stop. I haven't read a book like that in a while, and it was really fun.
Dislikes
-pacing of Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I read The Hunger Games in a day, Catching Fire in a week, and Mockingjay in a month. This kind of reflects how I feel about each novel. The first half of book 2 didn't know what it was, or what it was supposed to be. There was that whole tour they did of all the districts, and nothing happened. At first, I thought rebellions were going to break out in the districts and Katniss was going to have to help. But then rebellions did break out, and nothing happened. So I thought maybe what was happening was that the author was showing us each district, so that we would know them when they all joined in the rebellion later. But the author never did tell us much about any of the districts--we don't even know what each district produced! (I found a list online, but some of this must use info outside of the books, because I know some of this stuff was definitely NOT mentioned.)
Once the Quarter Quell started, I realized that the only thing Collins can pace to my satisfaction is an actual Hunger Game. The second half was a real page turner. However, I felt like Collins had realized the same thing I had, and spent the whole third book trying to get us into another Hunger Game. That was why she kept having Katniss think to herself that it was just like the Hunger Games all over again, but imo she really failed. The Hunger Games in book 2 were much less exciting to me than book one, and doing it a third time just felt tired. It also felt forced, trying to say the invasion of the Capitol was just like a Hunger Game, and it made Katniss feel affected.
Because I was so not feeling it during book 3, I noticed the mechanics of the pacing a lot more. This is something I wished I hadn't noticed. It's like seeing someone's underwear, and in not the good way, because I started noticing how every chapter ends on a cliff-hanger. How every chapter seems specifically engineered to get you into the next one, how nothing can be happening and then BAM!, there is some significant statement at the end or something happens to make you want to just keep going.
Imo, that's bad writing. That's blockbuster writing. That's there to keep you in your seat, not to tell a good story. Because good stories have ups and downs and lulls and they are dictated by characters and events, not by chapter lengths. The first book felt like it was being driven by events, but the fact that I started to notice the chapter endings made me feel like I was seeing seams. It made me go back to book 1 and realize there were seams there, too. Heavy ones. You know who does this? I thought to myself.
Dan Brown. I understand that people like Dan Brown; I understand why people think he's entertaining. I have more trouble understanding if people think he's a brilliant writer, but dude, to each her own. But he is not my own. I'm not sure I have a better insult than a Dan Brown comparison, actually. This is a great segue into:
-the writing. The plotting was so tight and intense in book 1 that I really found the writing quite good. Again, it wasn't until the plotting began to unravel that I began to notice the writing, and I found it lacking. In the extreme. On the micro level. And the macro level. Because everything was written like this. In fragments. Everywhere. In order to ratchet the tension. When you begin to notice it, it gets really annoying. Fragments are useful. Sometimes. Not every other sentence. Not eight sentences in a row. Not for entire paragraphs. Not every other paragraph. Save them, lady. Jesus.
On the macro level, my main problem was character development, especially the supporting cast. As I said, Rue was a series of sketches. That really worked for me. It did not work for Finnick, or Beetee, or Coin, or even Prim and her mom. I felt like I never came to know these people as real people. The only characters were really Peeta and Katniss, and sometimes Gale.
And even Katniss and Gale were shaky. But we'll get to that. Eventually. In fragments.
-Supporting characters. I feel . . . ambivalent about the characters introduced in book 2. I felt like the district 11 people were really interesting, but they all died. I didn't care about Finnick or Johanna, but thought Betee was rather interesting.
Finnick got more interesting in book 3, once we found out more about Anna. But then I started to feel that Anna, and the revelations about Finnick's past as a prostitute, were all just constructs in order for us to feel sympathy or for some reason care about Finnick. I felt like we didn't get to see him as a real and compassionate person, just details like Anna and his past that were supposed to make us think he's a great guy. And I didn't care about him being crazy or tying the rope at all--I just didn't see enough real moments from him to believe it.
I started to like Johanna a little more, since the author didn't attempt to make us change our opinion about her, but she still felt affected. Like the author was writing a really "tough girl" that to me just felt like a caricature.
And this was some of the main problems with characterization: I felt like the author was trying to tell me what to think. That's bad enough, but I felt like sometimes, Collins herself didn't even know what to think. This is particularly problematic when it comes to the main characters.
-Katniss. I rather wished at first that instead of the Gamemakers announcing that two winners from the same District could survive, Peeta and Katniss had just hooked up of their own accord. Then at the end with all the others dead she could have realized she couldn't kill him--after all, that's what she realized anyway. I wanted that because it would have been courageous for Katniss, and heroic.
What I realize now is that the way it is written allows Katniss to show some of her ruthlessness. She wouldn't hook up out of her own accord with Peeta. She's planning on killing Peeta, until the Gamemakers change the rules. This is juxtaposed against Peeta, who never planned on killing Katniss.
Katniss is trapped in this dark world. Gale wants to fight it; Peeta wants to live within its framework and yet retain his humanity. Yet Katniss just accepts it, and does what she can to keep what little she has. She obviously does have compassion--what she does for Prim and Rue is evidence enough. But her morality is centered around those she loves. Unlike Gale or Peeta, she does not look beyond her circle to the world. She has no bigger picture. She reminds me a lot of Spike from BtVS, or other characters who look after them and theirs and could give a fuck for the world. You don't often get to see that in girl characters, and I rejoiced at the sight.
Having the Gamemakers changed the rules furthermore shows how much they manipulate her and fuck her over. At the end of The Hunger Games, Katniss realizes this, and seems to realize she can't just live within her circle any more. Instead of accepting the world as it is, she defies it (by eating the berries). To me, it looked like her first step toward looking beyond her own circle, and fighting for the world.
Even if it wasn't, though--if that act of defiance was just because Peeta was now a part of her circle--the characterization of Katniss afterwards is extremely uneven, particularly in Mockingjay. In each book, she seems to revert to only caring for herself and hers, and then has some big revelation which leads her to fight FOR THE WORLD. I don't care if she retains her self-sufficient morality--I like Spike--but for the love of god, keep it consistent. Half the time, she's crying over strangers and people blown up in a mountain, and the other half the time, she's all "die die die, these people have to die so people I love can live!"
And then there's public perception as well. What everyone seems to love about Katniss is her humanity, when Peeta is the more humane one. Did they love how fierce she was? Half the time the author seemed to be trying to convince us Katniss is so loyal and brave, and other times it was all about her ruthlessness. I feel like the author didn't quite know what she wanted Katniss to be.
-Gale. I felt like he turned into a caricature too. All he could do was go around being jealous of Katniss. It was so stupid--and yes, to me, felt Jacob-like. He was just this douchey jerk who didn't listen to anything Katniss was saying, and suspected her at every turn. And I don't understand the end. I mean, there was that whole conversation where he said Katniss would always see him as responsible for the death of her sister, but that seemed far-fetched, and the Gale in my head didn't stop fighting. The Gale in my head loved Katniss as much as Peeta, and because Katniss was still undecided in the end, would have waited for her too. I just don't get him or whether I was supposed to like him at all or what the point was.
-brainwashing. As I said, I love brainwashing! It's like dragons: give me brainwashing and I will be happier than the same story that does not have brainwashing. However, I sort of felt like Peeta's brainwashing was not handled how I wanted it to be. I wanted to see more of him hating on Katniss, and more of the struggle going on within him. I think it was because there was a jump between him trying to strangle her, and his next serious interactions with her, when he joins their capitol invasion team. There was one scene in between, but it was very short, and I wanted more of that--him barely being able to stomach her and wanting to kill her, and only just controlling it. That's the stuff I like about brainwashing in stories, when the real self is only barely winning against the programmed stuff. By the time Peeta joins the capitol team, Peeta's real self is a lot more in control.
-the end. I sort of resented the end where Katniss had to get married and have children. I liked the idea of a heroine not having to choose someone she met when she was a teenager, or not even having to be married at all. I thought this series might go there, but obviously everyone would've been hounding Collins for the rest of her life about how Katniss would choose, so she just went the safe route and made her live Happily Ever After with passels of brats. Not that I'm against kids. Just Happily Ever Afters, and even though the author tried to make this bittersweet, it was really tied up with a nice bow at the end. It utterly defeated my hopes and expectations for a book that doesn't end with a "17 Years Later" epilogue :o(
-the handling of dark themes in the series. I had a problem with this from the beginning, but when the writing, plotting, and characterization dropped through the floor, I all of the sudden had a much harder time dealing with this.
This is a series about children killing each other. Because it is from Katniss's POV, there is not as strong of an opportunity to sit back and say, "let us deal with the repercussions of this." It is a fact of her world, and she can't really understand the depth of fucked up psychology that would result from such a world, because she is inside of it. In the first book, I was able to say to myself, "Yes, but we are inside this world, and this is the way things are; we can't have the outside perspective."
However, the next two books, particularly the third, got into some politics that I feel should have an outsider perspective. The parts that bothered me the most were Katniss's and Gale's insistence that they should kill the people who are in their way. They talk about killing Snow; they even talk about killing Coin quite early on. Katniss seems to agree that the solution to people who are in their way is killing people. She does not agree when Gale wants to blow up the mountain when there are people in it; Gale sagely points out that she has no problem shooting people with arrows. Katniss says, "That's different." Maybe it is, but I don't see it. This is a problem both with Katniss's characterization and the morality of the book: Katniss's differentiation here to me looks arbitrary.
Of course, on the other side of things, you have Peeta, saying that the revolution is just leading to more killing and massacre. This feels like a straw man argument. I feel like not just Katniss and Gale, but the narrative is telling me Peeta is wrong. His argument is never really considered. Katniss thinks of it in passing when Gale wants to blow up the mountain, but it comes up then in order to justify her disagreement with Gale, and then disappears again when she's killing people in the Capitol. Also, Peeta's been brainwashed; it's unclear of how much of what he says about compassion and the evils of war is a result of his brainwashing.
Dude, I don't really see a way, other than war, to take down this government--which is awful and killing people and should be taken down. However, I would like options other than war to be considered. I would like the idea that war, even if it is necessary, can never be righteous, to at least be contemplated. In the end, the biggest problem with this book is the problem outlined here, where I lament the black and whiteness that is fantasy and sci fi these days.
Again, gestures towards gray are made. Peeta's arguments, Katniss's feelings on occasion. Even the death of Prim, and the death of Coin, suggest that there was no "good side" here. And yet these arguments fell flat and felt unreal to me, much the way the Sorting Hat's caterwauling and Dumbledore's pleas and Harry's offer of mercy to Voldemort felt. In the end, the Dark Lord still has to die. Murder is really the only way to go, guys.
-Chosen Ones. This isn't really the fault of the series itself, but it made me realize I'm really getting tired of chosen ones. I like them, because I like how tortured and fucked up prophesy can make you. In this series, there is of course no prophesy, but the force of public opinion forces Katniss into a certain position in much the same way. And I'm just tired! It's always such a burden. Poor little put-upon child, you have to be the hero. And why is that burden so much heavier than what everyone else is suffering? In some ways it is; Katniss had the weight of a revolution on her shoulders; Harry Potter had the weight of the world. Neither of them chose that. But I'm starting to want to see the POVs of like, normal people, whose lives are difficult because Snow is like, killing their children, or because they're Muggles and Voldemort is hunting them, or whatever. Maybe I need some more Diana Wynne Jones in my life.
(It'd be cool to see a "chosen one" story where the hero is actually delighted to be the chosen one, and totally takes advantage of it. The shit has to hit the fan at some point, but dude. Now I'm imagining Draco Malfoy finding out he's the one who has to kill Voldemort, and how he would totally crow and strut and hold it over Harry's head.
I always wanted to write a story about a girl who is told she is the chosen one, and solemnly takes up the burden of her destiny. She doesn't like that she has to be the center of a war; she hates that this has been thrust upon her, but she'll do it for Truth and Justice and Freedom. And then she finds out she isn't actually the chosen one. The leaders couldn't find the Chosen One, so they just picked someone they knew they could manipulate. But our heroine still believes in Truth, Justice, and Freedom, so continues the charade, even knowing she's just a pawn. She believes people need a figurehead, someone to rally to, and that the heart of the resistance would be broken if they knew the truth about her. ...Of course, eventually she finds out that the cause isn't even "just", or at least is far more complicated, and that the enemy they are fighting is human too . . . even though they're aliens. I've had this idea for I dunno, like 8 years, but still have not really written any part of it . . . )
*
I would be interested in discussing The Hunger Games with anyone who has read it. My whole review thing is horrendously long, so I understand if you don't want to read the whole thing. But come on, tell me what you thought about the series! I guess a bunch of people liked it, and I'd love to hear why. I'm interested in the movies (are they really happening?), even though the books ended up not particularly sitting well with me.
Spoilers galore.
Likes
-Katniss. Katniss was exciting to me, because I feel like I haven't often seen a heroine who had trouble expressing or sometimes even feeling emotion. The warrior heroines you sometimes see sometimes struggle between their masculine and feminine sides, and I really appreciate the Katniss's problems weren't expressed that way.
There are hardly ever heroines like this. Heroes are the Broody Dark Types who have trouble with Feelings, and have heroines who Love Them and Teach Them To Be Human. God, please, give me a story where a girl is an emotional fuckwit and the man by her side is this utterly loving, gentle baker who shames her all the time with his humanity. I love that Katniss is the warrior and Peeta is the heart, and I don't care if Katniss is rather poorly drawn (I'll get to that later); I love the sole fact that it exists.
-the Gale/Peeta dilemma. The dilemma is a little annoying (more on that later), but I loved it in the first two books. Not only am I tired of heroines who are always the heart and sole support of their Man, I'm also tired of Fated Relationships always working out In The End. I just . . . it's this thing in fantasy and fairytales and romcom and no doubt YA, where if Person A is forced into some kind of romantic situation with Person B, People A and B are going to fall in love with each other. And they're going to say, "lol! Remember how we were forced together? Good times. But without us being kidnapped and tortured together, we never would've hooked up! Ain't life grand?" and it's stupid. Fate doesn't always tie you up with someone you can fall in love with. You can't always love the one you're with. So I wanted Katniss to actually get a chance to have Gale be in the picture.
Also, she's 16. In books like Harry Potter lives always have to be mapped out by the age of 16; you have to have who you're going to marry all lined up for you. Heaven forbid Ginny Weasley actually realize that she didn't want the boy she dreamed of when she was 11. Of course, it is all resolved by book 3 (more on that later).
-for that matter: the idea of Gale. I just loved the fact that the childhood friend was a love interest, that Katniss's history didn't seem to begin with the book. Girls-next-door can be love interests, but boys-next-door so often must be sidekicks while our heroines wait for someone new and magical and exciting to sweep them off their feet. For some reason, the examples I'm thinking of are Tor in Hero and the Crown and Ducky in Pretty In Pink. Nor is Peeta at all the sparkly, popular kid, blue-veined immortal like Edward or whoever the main guy is in Pretty or Luthe. But I loved that the girl-torn-between-two-guys wasn't at all like the triangle typified by Hero and the Crown and blown out of all proportion by Twilight.
So, I liked the idea of Gale. In Book 1, I didn't feel like he got enough screen time to really show who he was. I had such confidence that we were going to find out more about him. Obviously, Katniss had this whole history with him that just wasn't revealed in Book 2. I thought we were going to see why she became friends with him, and in Book 2 we started to, although it didn't have as much of him as I would have liked. It showed that he was quiet, and brave, and loved Katniss very much. It also showed that he was revolutionary, and I sort of thought that he and Peeta and Katniss would be this triumvirate of awesome that would lead the fight. Like, Peeta had the words and the compassion, but Gale has a determination and a hatred and a hardness the other two don't have, and Katniss has the fierceness and the loyalty and the figurehead thing going to fill out the rest.
-Peeta. I don't know how anyone couldn't love Peeta, so maybe this doesn't merit much discussion. I love that he's a baker, I love that he's such a great speaker, I love his love for Katniss, I love his compassion. I love the way he painted himself in the mud. I was a little confused by him joining the Careers. I know it was to protect Katniss, but er . . . what would he have done if they had lit upon Katniss in a different situation and all four of them were trying to kill her at once? It would've been a better idea for him to just try to convince her to form an alliance with him from the get-go. Of course then it wouldn't have been as dramatic.
-Rue. I don't feel that Rue was really fleshed out, but unlike some other supporting characters, I feel it sort of worked. She was like a series of beautiful sketches. I don't have a very visual imagination, and yet I feel like I can see her (even though I don't really). My favorite is a really strong image of her in my head, where she's in a tree looking dark and silently at Katniss, and slowly her hand comes up to point at the trackerjackers. I don't think that scene was written in a particularly compelling way or anything, but there was just something so quiet and eerie about it that stuck with me. I cried when she died--not when she got shot, or Katniss sang to her, or covered her in flowers, but when her District sent the bread. It was their loyalty that really got me.
-some plot elements that go straight to my kinks. Brainwashing: just the fact of it. In fact, there was one super compelling plot element that just excited me to know end each time. In the first book, it was the Hunger Game itself. In the second book, it was that whole tension between what Katniss felt, and what she had to pretend to feel for the cameras. I'm a sucker for that ridiculous we-have-to-pretend-to-be-a-couple stuff. I read it all the time in fanfic, but I hadn't read a good pro-fic one in ages!
-pacing of The Hunger Games. I read this book in one day. I couldn't stop. I haven't read a book like that in a while, and it was really fun.
Dislikes
-pacing of Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I read The Hunger Games in a day, Catching Fire in a week, and Mockingjay in a month. This kind of reflects how I feel about each novel. The first half of book 2 didn't know what it was, or what it was supposed to be. There was that whole tour they did of all the districts, and nothing happened. At first, I thought rebellions were going to break out in the districts and Katniss was going to have to help. But then rebellions did break out, and nothing happened. So I thought maybe what was happening was that the author was showing us each district, so that we would know them when they all joined in the rebellion later. But the author never did tell us much about any of the districts--we don't even know what each district produced! (I found a list online, but some of this must use info outside of the books, because I know some of this stuff was definitely NOT mentioned.)
Once the Quarter Quell started, I realized that the only thing Collins can pace to my satisfaction is an actual Hunger Game. The second half was a real page turner. However, I felt like Collins had realized the same thing I had, and spent the whole third book trying to get us into another Hunger Game. That was why she kept having Katniss think to herself that it was just like the Hunger Games all over again, but imo she really failed. The Hunger Games in book 2 were much less exciting to me than book one, and doing it a third time just felt tired. It also felt forced, trying to say the invasion of the Capitol was just like a Hunger Game, and it made Katniss feel affected.
Because I was so not feeling it during book 3, I noticed the mechanics of the pacing a lot more. This is something I wished I hadn't noticed. It's like seeing someone's underwear, and in not the good way, because I started noticing how every chapter ends on a cliff-hanger. How every chapter seems specifically engineered to get you into the next one, how nothing can be happening and then BAM!, there is some significant statement at the end or something happens to make you want to just keep going.
Imo, that's bad writing. That's blockbuster writing. That's there to keep you in your seat, not to tell a good story. Because good stories have ups and downs and lulls and they are dictated by characters and events, not by chapter lengths. The first book felt like it was being driven by events, but the fact that I started to notice the chapter endings made me feel like I was seeing seams. It made me go back to book 1 and realize there were seams there, too. Heavy ones. You know who does this? I thought to myself.
Dan Brown. I understand that people like Dan Brown; I understand why people think he's entertaining. I have more trouble understanding if people think he's a brilliant writer, but dude, to each her own. But he is not my own. I'm not sure I have a better insult than a Dan Brown comparison, actually. This is a great segue into:
-the writing. The plotting was so tight and intense in book 1 that I really found the writing quite good. Again, it wasn't until the plotting began to unravel that I began to notice the writing, and I found it lacking. In the extreme. On the micro level. And the macro level. Because everything was written like this. In fragments. Everywhere. In order to ratchet the tension. When you begin to notice it, it gets really annoying. Fragments are useful. Sometimes. Not every other sentence. Not eight sentences in a row. Not for entire paragraphs. Not every other paragraph. Save them, lady. Jesus.
On the macro level, my main problem was character development, especially the supporting cast. As I said, Rue was a series of sketches. That really worked for me. It did not work for Finnick, or Beetee, or Coin, or even Prim and her mom. I felt like I never came to know these people as real people. The only characters were really Peeta and Katniss, and sometimes Gale.
And even Katniss and Gale were shaky. But we'll get to that. Eventually. In fragments.
-Supporting characters. I feel . . . ambivalent about the characters introduced in book 2. I felt like the district 11 people were really interesting, but they all died. I didn't care about Finnick or Johanna, but thought Betee was rather interesting.
Finnick got more interesting in book 3, once we found out more about Anna. But then I started to feel that Anna, and the revelations about Finnick's past as a prostitute, were all just constructs in order for us to feel sympathy or for some reason care about Finnick. I felt like we didn't get to see him as a real and compassionate person, just details like Anna and his past that were supposed to make us think he's a great guy. And I didn't care about him being crazy or tying the rope at all--I just didn't see enough real moments from him to believe it.
I started to like Johanna a little more, since the author didn't attempt to make us change our opinion about her, but she still felt affected. Like the author was writing a really "tough girl" that to me just felt like a caricature.
And this was some of the main problems with characterization: I felt like the author was trying to tell me what to think. That's bad enough, but I felt like sometimes, Collins herself didn't even know what to think. This is particularly problematic when it comes to the main characters.
-Katniss. I rather wished at first that instead of the Gamemakers announcing that two winners from the same District could survive, Peeta and Katniss had just hooked up of their own accord. Then at the end with all the others dead she could have realized she couldn't kill him--after all, that's what she realized anyway. I wanted that because it would have been courageous for Katniss, and heroic.
What I realize now is that the way it is written allows Katniss to show some of her ruthlessness. She wouldn't hook up out of her own accord with Peeta. She's planning on killing Peeta, until the Gamemakers change the rules. This is juxtaposed against Peeta, who never planned on killing Katniss.
Katniss is trapped in this dark world. Gale wants to fight it; Peeta wants to live within its framework and yet retain his humanity. Yet Katniss just accepts it, and does what she can to keep what little she has. She obviously does have compassion--what she does for Prim and Rue is evidence enough. But her morality is centered around those she loves. Unlike Gale or Peeta, she does not look beyond her circle to the world. She has no bigger picture. She reminds me a lot of Spike from BtVS, or other characters who look after them and theirs and could give a fuck for the world. You don't often get to see that in girl characters, and I rejoiced at the sight.
Having the Gamemakers changed the rules furthermore shows how much they manipulate her and fuck her over. At the end of The Hunger Games, Katniss realizes this, and seems to realize she can't just live within her circle any more. Instead of accepting the world as it is, she defies it (by eating the berries). To me, it looked like her first step toward looking beyond her own circle, and fighting for the world.
Even if it wasn't, though--if that act of defiance was just because Peeta was now a part of her circle--the characterization of Katniss afterwards is extremely uneven, particularly in Mockingjay. In each book, she seems to revert to only caring for herself and hers, and then has some big revelation which leads her to fight FOR THE WORLD. I don't care if she retains her self-sufficient morality--I like Spike--but for the love of god, keep it consistent. Half the time, she's crying over strangers and people blown up in a mountain, and the other half the time, she's all "die die die, these people have to die so people I love can live!"
And then there's public perception as well. What everyone seems to love about Katniss is her humanity, when Peeta is the more humane one. Did they love how fierce she was? Half the time the author seemed to be trying to convince us Katniss is so loyal and brave, and other times it was all about her ruthlessness. I feel like the author didn't quite know what she wanted Katniss to be.
-Gale. I felt like he turned into a caricature too. All he could do was go around being jealous of Katniss. It was so stupid--and yes, to me, felt Jacob-like. He was just this douchey jerk who didn't listen to anything Katniss was saying, and suspected her at every turn. And I don't understand the end. I mean, there was that whole conversation where he said Katniss would always see him as responsible for the death of her sister, but that seemed far-fetched, and the Gale in my head didn't stop fighting. The Gale in my head loved Katniss as much as Peeta, and because Katniss was still undecided in the end, would have waited for her too. I just don't get him or whether I was supposed to like him at all or what the point was.
-brainwashing. As I said, I love brainwashing! It's like dragons: give me brainwashing and I will be happier than the same story that does not have brainwashing. However, I sort of felt like Peeta's brainwashing was not handled how I wanted it to be. I wanted to see more of him hating on Katniss, and more of the struggle going on within him. I think it was because there was a jump between him trying to strangle her, and his next serious interactions with her, when he joins their capitol invasion team. There was one scene in between, but it was very short, and I wanted more of that--him barely being able to stomach her and wanting to kill her, and only just controlling it. That's the stuff I like about brainwashing in stories, when the real self is only barely winning against the programmed stuff. By the time Peeta joins the capitol team, Peeta's real self is a lot more in control.
-the end. I sort of resented the end where Katniss had to get married and have children. I liked the idea of a heroine not having to choose someone she met when she was a teenager, or not even having to be married at all. I thought this series might go there, but obviously everyone would've been hounding Collins for the rest of her life about how Katniss would choose, so she just went the safe route and made her live Happily Ever After with passels of brats. Not that I'm against kids. Just Happily Ever Afters, and even though the author tried to make this bittersweet, it was really tied up with a nice bow at the end. It utterly defeated my hopes and expectations for a book that doesn't end with a "17 Years Later" epilogue :o(
-the handling of dark themes in the series. I had a problem with this from the beginning, but when the writing, plotting, and characterization dropped through the floor, I all of the sudden had a much harder time dealing with this.
This is a series about children killing each other. Because it is from Katniss's POV, there is not as strong of an opportunity to sit back and say, "let us deal with the repercussions of this." It is a fact of her world, and she can't really understand the depth of fucked up psychology that would result from such a world, because she is inside of it. In the first book, I was able to say to myself, "Yes, but we are inside this world, and this is the way things are; we can't have the outside perspective."
However, the next two books, particularly the third, got into some politics that I feel should have an outsider perspective. The parts that bothered me the most were Katniss's and Gale's insistence that they should kill the people who are in their way. They talk about killing Snow; they even talk about killing Coin quite early on. Katniss seems to agree that the solution to people who are in their way is killing people. She does not agree when Gale wants to blow up the mountain when there are people in it; Gale sagely points out that she has no problem shooting people with arrows. Katniss says, "That's different." Maybe it is, but I don't see it. This is a problem both with Katniss's characterization and the morality of the book: Katniss's differentiation here to me looks arbitrary.
Of course, on the other side of things, you have Peeta, saying that the revolution is just leading to more killing and massacre. This feels like a straw man argument. I feel like not just Katniss and Gale, but the narrative is telling me Peeta is wrong. His argument is never really considered. Katniss thinks of it in passing when Gale wants to blow up the mountain, but it comes up then in order to justify her disagreement with Gale, and then disappears again when she's killing people in the Capitol. Also, Peeta's been brainwashed; it's unclear of how much of what he says about compassion and the evils of war is a result of his brainwashing.
Dude, I don't really see a way, other than war, to take down this government--which is awful and killing people and should be taken down. However, I would like options other than war to be considered. I would like the idea that war, even if it is necessary, can never be righteous, to at least be contemplated. In the end, the biggest problem with this book is the problem outlined here, where I lament the black and whiteness that is fantasy and sci fi these days.
Again, gestures towards gray are made. Peeta's arguments, Katniss's feelings on occasion. Even the death of Prim, and the death of Coin, suggest that there was no "good side" here. And yet these arguments fell flat and felt unreal to me, much the way the Sorting Hat's caterwauling and Dumbledore's pleas and Harry's offer of mercy to Voldemort felt. In the end, the Dark Lord still has to die. Murder is really the only way to go, guys.
-Chosen Ones. This isn't really the fault of the series itself, but it made me realize I'm really getting tired of chosen ones. I like them, because I like how tortured and fucked up prophesy can make you. In this series, there is of course no prophesy, but the force of public opinion forces Katniss into a certain position in much the same way. And I'm just tired! It's always such a burden. Poor little put-upon child, you have to be the hero. And why is that burden so much heavier than what everyone else is suffering? In some ways it is; Katniss had the weight of a revolution on her shoulders; Harry Potter had the weight of the world. Neither of them chose that. But I'm starting to want to see the POVs of like, normal people, whose lives are difficult because Snow is like, killing their children, or because they're Muggles and Voldemort is hunting them, or whatever. Maybe I need some more Diana Wynne Jones in my life.
(It'd be cool to see a "chosen one" story where the hero is actually delighted to be the chosen one, and totally takes advantage of it. The shit has to hit the fan at some point, but dude. Now I'm imagining Draco Malfoy finding out he's the one who has to kill Voldemort, and how he would totally crow and strut and hold it over Harry's head.
I always wanted to write a story about a girl who is told she is the chosen one, and solemnly takes up the burden of her destiny. She doesn't like that she has to be the center of a war; she hates that this has been thrust upon her, but she'll do it for Truth and Justice and Freedom. And then she finds out she isn't actually the chosen one. The leaders couldn't find the Chosen One, so they just picked someone they knew they could manipulate. But our heroine still believes in Truth, Justice, and Freedom, so continues the charade, even knowing she's just a pawn. She believes people need a figurehead, someone to rally to, and that the heart of the resistance would be broken if they knew the truth about her. ...Of course, eventually she finds out that the cause isn't even "just", or at least is far more complicated, and that the enemy they are fighting is human too . . . even though they're aliens. I've had this idea for I dunno, like 8 years, but still have not really written any part of it . . . )
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I would be interested in discussing The Hunger Games with anyone who has read it. My whole review thing is horrendously long, so I understand if you don't want to read the whole thing. But come on, tell me what you thought about the series! I guess a bunch of people liked it, and I'd love to hear why. I'm interested in the movies (are they really happening?), even though the books ended up not particularly sitting well with me.
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Oh, yeah, I agree!
I understand, it's hard to be a hero when you never asked for it, blah blah blah, but after a certain point I needed her to really fully accept who she needed to be, and I never felt she did.
Well, I would have been fine with her rejecting it completely, too. Actually, I'm even fine with her as the reluctant figurehead. What I didn't like is that her feelings against it never seemed to be fully articulated, and her reasons for choosing to do it anyway weren't well-established either. She just seemed shuffled around by what other people needed, which could be interested, except she felt shuffled most of all by the author, and frankly, I don't want to see the author's hand at all in a story. I just felt like Collins couldn't keep Katniss's motivations clear and just had her do stuff according to what was needed from the plot.
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
I think I've heard of that. I guess I'll give it a try!
I want to see what sort of problems THAT attitude creates rather than just reading again and again about how great and difficult and heavy the head that wears the crown is, etc. etc.
I want to see it too. I never would have 10 years ago, but I've just become so bored. I feel like I should write it now, except I just have so many other things to do!
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I kind of got whiplash from the number of times that her views on it shifted - I kept expecting her to stay on one path, and then it would change, over and over again. And I completely agree that it was all plot-driven, not character-driven, and that you could see the seams.
I absolutely adore Graceling. I love her writing and I LOVE the main characters, especially the protagonist, and how the story progresses. She's also written another novel that isn't a sequel but is in the same universe called Fire, which I also enjoyed a lot, and her third novel comes out this April and I CANNOT WAIT.
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Cool, I'll check it out! Thanks for the recommendation!