Tuesday 13 October 2009 at 3:30 pm
When I first heard of
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I immediately thought of
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami. This was unfair of me, or anyone. While there are quite a few similarities, Battle Royale and The Hunger Games are wholly different and differently effective. And The Hunger Games wins the battle because of its more internalized questioning of how violence affects society and children. Battle Royale is a big, blunt, violent object, while The Hunger Games is more subtle and nuanced, and, less visceral. In this series, a young girl named Katniss Everdeen is chosen to fight in a government-controlled-reality-tv-gone-haywire BATTLE TO THE DEATH, against 23 other kids between the ages of 12-18. Unfortunately, one of the kids she is supposed to be fighting is a boy named Peeta, who saved her life when she was younger. Yeah, and that's only the drama of the first book. But the thing I like most about this series is Collins deft handling of the Reality TV elements of The Hunger Games. As a fan of the genre, especially the cheesy
Big Brother, The Hunger Games handles everything well, from the rabid fans at home becoming unneccesarily attached to the games contestants to the
showmance that plays a big part in the second book.
