U.L. Harper Review: The Hunger Games

I’m going to be honest.

The Hunger Games is a good story. Katniss is a character that young girls will be able to latch onto. As a matter of fact, I’d rather young girls and young women find a place in their hearts for Katniss long before they identify with that girl from Twilight. The Hunger Games is a rather short, dare I say, sort of fun novel that begs to leave an impression on the reader. It certainly left an impression on me.

As I was saying, Katniss moves this story. And she better. It’s written in first-person present-tense so if Katniss can’t move the story, it would be dead in the water.

The story itself is built on tension, so there was that and it moved fast enough that once I actually got going I knew I’d complete it in a reasonable amount of time.

But I’m going to be honest.

I was bored most of this book. The last two or three pages were pretty good and the first few lines of chapter, I think, twenty-five. If you didn’t know, there are twenty-seven chapters in this book.

I wasn’t bored by the happenings in the story. The events weren’t wildly entertaining but that wasn’t the issue. The narrative is what made me walk away from the pages numerous times. Week sentences riddle these pages, and it’s in part due to the POV. It seemed stilted. I thought the narrative would make more sense in action sequences, but it didn’t. In turn, it lacked excitement. I partially read an article that said the previews are holding back showing the violence from the story. My thought was this: they’re not holding back; they’re just not there.

Now this might be because I’m a guy, but I thought the entirety of Part 2 should have been a blood bath. We should have had knife fights, weapons laying around that the Capitol left for them, you know, to spice things up, to help them kill each other. We should have had more intense sickness to overcome and way more suffering from dehydration, more details on killing animals for food. All this stuff is barely mentioned at best. This should have been a clinic in survival. The Hunger Games should have been The Road meets The Running Man meets—I’ll say it—Twilight.

I’m going to be honest.

I made a small sample of the type of narrative I would have liked to have seen. I'm only adding this in because this is what I did for much of the novel. I rewrote as I read to add tension. Here goes: I never murdered anyone but with the cameras rolling we shouldn’t show fear. I release the bow and watch it fly several yards and land in her temple. I don’t flinch at the site of her dropping to her knees and then to her face. I need to learn from this. This is what survival looks like.

I don’t know. Something like that.

Finally, I don’t see that Katniss or Peeta changed from their ordeal in The Hunger Games. It’s kind of hinted at, but her situation should have affected her greatly. I know many people will say I have to read the other books to see if this happened. This is because it’s a trilogy. This one book is really only the first act. Well, I’ll watch the movies. Like I stated, I like the story. The narrative is the issue. It’s kind of boring.

To recap. Katniss? Great. Story? Cool. Fun factor? Right on. Excitement? Could use more of it. I just wish the authoring was better.

Last thing. No, this book is simply not for me. It’s beyond my age group and I’m sure it’s meant for females. Males can and will like it, but it’s meant for females, I’m sure. Before anyone gets upset at me for stating the obvious, I’m going to go ahead and say, well, it is the obvious. I’m just saying, it’s literally not for me.

With that being said. If you need an example of this type of narrative done well, check out Fight Club. Seriously, it’s 200 pages of a book for men written by a man.

Thanks for reading.