(no subject)

[elle_white]

 So, I am terribly behind the times and I know little about The Hunger Games book series. But apparently, it's set in a dystopian world where people fight for the entertainment of rich people? And there's  this lady called Katniss who participates in these fights.

Could anyone tell me more about this series? I've heard that it's controversial, and people have mixed opinions on it. Could you tell me your thoughts? 

Comments

[astridv]

I read all three books in the space of four days a little while ago. (And it only took four days because I had to wait a day for the final two to arrive in the mail). The writing style is okay but nothing to write home about, but the dystopian setting feels real, and so do her characters. Katniss makes a great, three-dimensional, unwilling heroine. People complain about the story being taken over by the love triangle but I thought that was very much in the background, with a lot of more prominent foreground action and politics.

I'd suggest to just check out the first one and see for yourself. (I've learned not to give too much weight to other people's opinions 'cuz often enough I find they're wrong.)

eta: and I should add that it's very rare that original fiction can grab my attention like these books do. I usually rather hunt for a fanfic that hits my buttons. But these books sucked me in completely.

[elle_white]

Thank you! I've to only care what my f-list has to say about fiction, because I have similar tastes to most of them, and I greatly enjoy getting their insights on things.I've heard a lot of mixed opinions about it that are admittedly off-putting, but I like stories with dystopian setting, and I'm happy there's a mainstream action series staring a lady. It's more proof that the old belief about lady heroes making action series less appealing is bullshit.

[inkstone]

So I read all three books. I liked the first one a lot. I still liked the second one but less so. The third one irritated me a lot and I kind of hate it.

My main complaint about the series is that while Katniss is a great protag, she increasingly loses her agency (or never gains it, depending on how you look at it) as the books continue. Despite being a kickbutt heroine, she's not very proactive and is in fact rather reactive -- which is part of what made the final book so disappointing for me.

[nijibug]

I overheard a few people talking about the series when I went out for pizza last night and this is essentially what they said! One of them was asking the others if she should read the books, and her friends told her to just read the first one.

[genarti]

I have read the first book (like... two days ago) and I really liked it. From everything I've heard, I'll like the second and third books increasingly less; Katniss gets less agency and more love-triangling, from all I've heard. But I loved Katniss and liked Suzanne Collins's writing style (spare in a way that suits the heroine, to me), so I may well read them anyway at some point, but I'm prepared to hold just the first one close to my heart.

The basic set-up is that this is a dystopian well-post-apocalyptic world where what used to be North America is divided up into twelve Districts surrounding a central Capital. The Capital is where the money is, and the Districts have various specialties (coal, agriculture, luxury goods, etc) and are tightly under the Capital's control. Every year, every District has to send one boy and one girl (picked by a complicated lottery) to the Capital to participate in the Hunger Games, in which all twenty-four of these kids fight to the death, and the winner gets funds and stuff for their District. FUN FOR EVERYBODY, obviously!

Controversies, as far as I can tell: a) a significant contingent of people liked the first book more than the others; b) a significant contingent of people didn't like the end of the trilogy; c) the usual shipping wars; d) Katniss hails from the Appalachians and is described in the book as having "olive skin" and dark hair, which is racially ambiguous, so some people were upset and offended when a white actress was cast in the movie. (Personally, I'm not as bothered as I would be if it weren't an ambiguous description, because I know plenty of people with Mediterranean ancestry who identify as white and have that kind of coloring, some of them from that area of the country; that said, it was also a chance for Hollywood to go with a POC actress, and they didn't.)

Basically, this is a longwinded way to say that I agree with astridv that you should check out the book and see if you like it or not. It's a very quick read, I found.