Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Hunger Games

Lies dieses Review auf Deutsch
Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic Press
ISB N: 0439023483 / 978-0439023481
Price: 17.99 $
Source: borrowed from a friend
Pages: 384
Previous Book: /
Following Books: 2. Catching Fire / 3. Mockingjay


Katniss lives in District 12, the poorest District in the country Panem and she has to go hunting illegally to support her mother and her sister Prim. Every year, the so called Hunger Games are organized where 24 tributes - a boy and a girl from each district - have to fight to death, until one of them survives. The tributes are aged 12 to 18 years old and are chosen by random. This year, Prim's name is in the lottery wheel for the first time, but is picked. This means the certain death for her because she is badly nurtured and can do only few things. To safe her sister, Katniss volunteers to fight instead of her sister and therefore she and Peeta go into the fight for District 12. During the preparation phase, Peeta suggests to pretend to be in love with each other to get many sponsors (they could raise their survival chances). But when they get into the arena, everyone is for themselves. But it seems, as if Peeta didn't only pretend his love to Katniss... or did he? Will Katniss survive?


Own Opinion
I really liked the book and it was easy to read. The Hunger Games is the first book since a long time where the protagonist always did exactly what I wanted her to do in every situation. Also, the introduction to the story was very well-done; the surrondings of the new country Panem was described without sounding boring. But there are obviously many people dying in this story which is why the series is not to recommend to sensitive people. A few friends have read the books before I started and said that the violence in this trilogy is pretty extreme, but I actually didn't think of it that way; maybe it's just because I was already prepared for it and already know violence from many books and movies. To put it in a nutshell, I wanna give a huge thumbs up to Suzanne Collins. I already have the second book borrowed from my friend and am gonna read it during Christmas break; be sure to look forward to a review on this blog!


by Cécile