The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

[pamela]

So, this series has quickly become my go-to fun, easy read to rekindle my joy of reading. It's not complicated, but it has a lot to say. The characters in The Hunger Games mean something, and they exist in a way that not a lot YA fiction manages to make their characters exist. They all have a sense of lives, and individuality. Every one of them moves the plot forward in a meaningful way, instead of just to prop up a Mary Sue protagonist (which Katniss is certainly not).

The simplicity of The Hunger Games is one of the reasons I think it really works so well. It tackles complicated topics and manages to world-build without being overwhelming and resorting to infodumps. Instead, we experience the world through the characters, and we only know what it salient to the plot and what it's trying to say. As an adult reader I am interested in the politics behind Panem, and how and why people are so willing to accept the central conceit of the Hunger Games themselves, but because that's not how we experience the story, it doesn't detract from the reading experience.

Honestly, this series is genuinely just great. I think everyone should read it, and makes a great introduction to YA dystopia as a genre. It's one of the best examples of it.