The Hunger Games, a Book Review by Difan Li

 The Hunger Games Book Review

by Difan Li

The Hunger Games is perhaps among the most well-known dystopian novels for young adults to this day. Written by American author, Suzanne Collins, it has been praised as brilliant, gripping, and suspenseful, and having an incredibly resonant plot even within the wide realm of future-based dystopian novels. The story follows Katniss Everdeen, a 16-year-old girl who lives in Panem, which once was North America. Now the land has become divided into the Capitol, a shining city government power, and twelve districts, each of which must provide one boy and girl as tributes to an annual event of mass murder, termed “The Hunger Games.” Katniss finds herself as the tribute of District 12, and with all the odds against her, struggles to survive this deadly game. Collins establishes a clear structured world that, while fictional in nature, is fully capable of being turned into a reality. In fact, the ease at which one can assume our own world in reaching such a state presents an almost frightful and definitely intriguing edge to the story. The setting, while seeming to revert to a primitive society in many aspects, is actually set in the future, something which becomes clear with the explanation of the near destruction that humanity faced and the establishment of a new order from the ashes of the past, that is to say, our current world. Having read and reread this book from a young age up to the present day, I have been able to view it through the eyes of each step of youth, gaining new perspectives on it with every visit. Viewing it from a thrilling but fantastical story of girl who is thrown into an adventure as she battles other children for survival to an analysis of a possible future under the reign of pure governmental control and the supremacy of the elite, I feel as if I have grown with the book as I discover and unravel new layers of symbolic and literal meaning. This book is one that I would be most likely to turn to on a day when I feel like revisiting the past, listening to an audiobook on a long drive, or sitting back and relaxing to a well-recounted tale. I recommend anyone who hasn’t read it to give it a try (I’m sure you won’t be disappointed), and for any old readers to return to this book and experience the same thrills that drew you to it the first time, as well as gain some new perspective on the story.