The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Dec. 19th, 2011 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI finally got around to reading this book (peer pressure!) and all I can say is: I liked this better when it was called Battle Royale and written by Koushun Takami.
HG was a fun but forgettable read, dreadfully simplistic and with some seriously wonky world-building, but my main issue is that I kept comparing it to Battle Royale and the comparison was not in Hunger Games' favor. Battle Royale was a visceral reading experience for me, one that literally gave me nightmares. It didn't pull punches or create easy outs. I desperately cared for the characters because they seemed so average, like what I could have been. In Hunger Games, other than the general dislike of murder, I didn't care for any of them - all the characters except Katniss and, to an extent, Peeta were not complex individuals with their own lives and goals, but undeveloped cypher obstacles to our protagonist's success. Moreover, the ompetitors' background made it so far removed from modern life that it made them less relatable than the average kids of BR. And there was the fact that BR characters had all sorts of preexisting relationships.
There is also the fact that HG is pedictable where BR is not.
It bothers me to no end that Suzanne Collins claims to have never heard of Battle Royale. But even if somehow that was the case, why would I love an inferior version of the same story when I have already loved and read the original take.
HG was a fun but forgettable read, dreadfully simplistic and with some seriously wonky world-building, but my main issue is that I kept comparing it to Battle Royale and the comparison was not in Hunger Games' favor. Battle Royale was a visceral reading experience for me, one that literally gave me nightmares. It didn't pull punches or create easy outs. I desperately cared for the characters because they seemed so average, like what I could have been. In Hunger Games, other than the general dislike of murder, I didn't care for any of them - all the characters except Katniss and, to an extent, Peeta were not complex individuals with their own lives and goals, but undeveloped cypher obstacles to our protagonist's success. Moreover, the ompetitors' background made it so far removed from modern life that it made them less relatable than the average kids of BR. And there was the fact that BR characters had all sorts of preexisting relationships.
There is also the fact that HG is pedictable where BR is not.
It bothers me to no end that Suzanne Collins claims to have never heard of Battle Royale. But even if somehow that was the case, why would I love an inferior version of the same story when I have already loved and read the original take.
