The fact that this second post is coming so quickly should tell you about how quickly I finished Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. I stayed up until four am reading it, and then quickly finished it before my 2:40 flight into Berkeley today. I guess you could say that is proof that I was proved wrong about the book, but actually, I wasn't.
Like I thought, once the setting and exposition about the characters was through, the book became every bit as meaty and compelling as I wanted it to be. I devoured it. The book is divided into three parts, and the second part sizzles with action, conflict and tension. It follows classic dramatic structure to a T, a trait I appreciate in a primarily action-driven story. But I still have my problems with the first part and, to some degree, the third.
It really, I think, comes back to the use of first-person present-tense. Just no matter what gruesome death is occurring, it still feels very young-adult fiction-y. Obviously not a problem if that is what you are aiming for, but when I'm reading young adult fiction, I want to forget what genre I'm reading because I get too caught up in the story. That never happened with The Hunger Games. While I was invested in the characters and their conflicts, I never forgot that this was a book aimed at young adults.
That said, I will be continuing the series at some point in the future to see what fate awaits our heroine Katniss.
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