November Reviews

This was another month of rereading a series I read years ago, and honestly they're still super good. I needed an escape this month, so falling into a world worse off than my own felt like a decent choice.

Let's not waste anymore time and just get to it.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I haven't read this book since I was in high school, and I was not at all shocked to find that it absolutely holds up.

Katniss Everdeen is living in the fallout of a revolution long before her time, in a world of districts controlled by the Capital. Every year, two children are selected from each district to fight to the death in a televised event called the Hunger Games. When Katniss' younger sister Prim is reaped for the event, Katniss volunteers to take her place, throwing her into a world of violence and desperation as she tries to make it home alive.

This book also does a spectacular job setting up for the second book, dropping hints and names that I recognized reading this time through and was delighted to see. Collins is a masterclass writer with incredible planning and phenomenal commentary-- people more articulate than me have talked about her ability to criticize and satirize the very society eating her books and how she crafts a brilliant narrative with vibrant characters in a very violent setting. Her worldbuilding alone means I want a bunch more books and will happily read the upcoming one about Haymitch.

I will say there were parts of it that felt very YA in terms of writing style, which is not bad because that's exactly what it is, it just means that I'm getting older and it's harder to relate to teenagers (lol).

Hunger Games is a great book, both as a standalone and as a jumping off point for the series.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

I forgot how brutal this one was, both in terms of violence and in how betrayed Katniss feels throughout essentially the entire book. 

Six months after Katniss and Peeta came home from the games, the quarter quell is announced, and Katniss finds herself preparing to return to the arena amidst district unrest and the whispers of a revolution. The world is changing, and so is Katniss, and it's only a matter of time before something ignites.

It takes longer than i remember (almost half the book) before they even get to the games, the rest is Katniss desperately trying to keep the people she loves alive, whether through half baked political strategy (she's seventeen and being lied to by everyone, I can't blame her plans for not being perfect) or sheer force of will and spite. We see more of the fallout of the first games in this book, the way it fucked up her and Peeta and most of the districts. 

The games are still there, of course, and I think the clock arena is horrifically clever on Collins' part, but they almost take a backseat to the alliances forming and new players appearing. An uprising has begun and Katniss feels a lot of ways about it, and this slow burn to the reveal of District Thirteen and the destruction of Twelve is painful even after all this time. 

Collins' sequel is devastating and holds up, both as expanded world building and as a follow up to The Hunger Games (even if I thought the beginning half was just a little bit slow, in my opinion). Overall I tore through this one and immediately rolling on to the next.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

This whole series is so fucking good, and I'm so glad that it existed when I was a teenager and that I can still wholly enjoy it as an adult.

After being rescued from the arena and taken to the long-thought destroyed District Thirteen, Katniss is reeling from the damage of it all. She never planned on being a figurehead, never wanted to be a symbol, and now she's caught between both sides who want her gone--either as a martyr or a victim. But Katniss has learned how to play games too, and she'll do whatever it takes to protect those she loves.

This one is long and brutal. It doesn't linger on each death as much as the previous two did, maybe as a commentary on Katniss growing more horrifically used to the people she loves dying, or maybe because she's crumbling in on herself as she loses more. It becomes a bigger and bigger loss. And the violence of this book-- something about the transition from arens violence and rebels being put down violence escalating to a full war is just. Wowza. And Katniss has clearly been affected by everything that's happened to her but had to just keep going.

Collins is a masterful storyteller and wields brutal critique and unflinching words with such poignancy-- so much of what I see in today's politics and society are reflected back in the ugly mirror of the world of the Hunger Games. I can see how they got to that point, and it's terrifying. 

But it's also hopeful-- I forgot just how hopeful the ending is, lovely in it's simple moving forward without forgetting, but learning to live with it all behind them.

Overall I just really loved this series and maintain that it's a landmark dystopian series.

It was a weird month, sorry the reviews are so short and disjointed, but it was exactly what I needed to get through November.

Until next time.

Literary recommendation: I'm going to plug Shark Heart by Emily Habeck again because it really is that good

Media recommendation: I got two for you this month-- I finished Agatha All Along close to the beginning of the month and it was absolutely spectacular, and I'm about halfway through the first season of Arcane, which I can already tell is going to fully infiltrate my brain.