Put down your Twilight books, here’s something to devour.
When the review copy arrived the cynical reviewer thought, “Not another teen novel in which zombies attend a posh private school and plot to eat each other’s boyfriends.”
Cynical reviewer turns to first page. Hmm, set in a post-apocalyptic world that rises out of the smoldering ruins of what was once the USA. Cynical reviewer is always interested in the Apocalypse. And the narrator: Katniss, a 16-year-old girl who has to support her family because her father was killed in a mining accident and her mother is too depressed to do anything. She regularly violates the law to hunt and forage in the woods around District 12.
And then she ends up in the annual Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a brutal contest which celebrates the victory of the Capitol in the rebellion of the Districts. Each district has to send two teenage “tributes” to compete in a televised reality show: a battle to the death. There is only one winner.
In short, this is Not Another Teen Novel in which zombies attend a posh private school and plot to eat each other’s boyfriends.
Imagine an amalgam of Shirley Jackson’s short story The Lottery, the TV show Survivor, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, the first Terminator, Running Man, Logan’s Run and other science-fiction stories set in repressive regimes in a dystopian future, but written in such vivid prose (with action sequences that shout, Hey James Cameron!) that it feels fresh and original.
And since it’s for the teen market, it’s got romance. Not the sappy “I would die without you” kind, but the tough “I will kill for you.” So there exist teen novels that are not about shopping and dating! That actually denounce turning teens into commodities! I’m cracking open the sequel Catching Fire, so do not disturb me.
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is available in hardcover at all National Bookstores.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
October 16th, 2009 at 16:32
Hmmm, sounds like Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale
October 17th, 2009 at 12:31
Oooh, sounds nice. After Libba Bray’s series, I haven’t had anything to read from the teenybopper genre.
October 17th, 2009 at 14:03
stub-born, that was what I was thinking! Battle Royale… I’m reading Hunger Games now. It’s very good, actually, but nowhere near Battle Royale’s grittiness or originality. But its a really, really good reccomendation for tweens (teens might find this boring). Thanks, Jessica, for the rec!