The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Amazon.com:

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been close to death before—and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever...

This is one of the best books I've read in years. I really enjoyed it and read almost all of it in one day because I didn't want to put it down.

Okay, about The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins doesn't make us wait. We get right into the action. She sets up her interesting world and gets her characters busy right away. The world is fascinating. Katniss, a teenage girl, lives in what used to be North America near the Rocky Mountains (the place I call home BTW). Things are strange in this futuristic place. The government of the Capitol keeps tight control of the districts around it. The people live in misery. They can barely scrape enough food together each day to feed themselves and in Katniss' district some people actually starve to death or die in mining accidents.

In order to exert their control over the country, the government sets up a "contest" each year and they draw two teenagers' names from each district to compete in a deadly game. 12 boys and 12 girls compete in the forest to see who can live the longest. They must find food and fight each other in order to survive.

To make it even more interesting, the government broadcasts it like a reality TV show. It is kind of like Big Brother or Survivor meets Lost. Everything that Katniss does or says is being shown to everyone in the country, including her family and friends back home.

Katniss is a hunter and she's very good with a bow. She's also pretty good at identifying edible plants and those that can be used for medicine. Her chances of surviving this crazy battle are actually quite good.

There's a boy from her district who makes it even more complicated. He says he loves her and wants to help her. Will they cooperate and take care of each other? Will they fall in love? You'll need to read it and find out.

If you like stories with action and excitement, you're going to love this book. I've given it a full five out of five stars and I would recommend it for anybody to read.

I'm very pleased that there will be two more books. The first one can stand alone as there is a clear beginning, middle, and end but I think most of us are happy to know that this isn't it. We want to know what will happen next. How is it possible, though, to wait for seven more months for the second book? This is going to be a new kind of torture for readers around the world.

I was so ready for this. After reading the marathon of five books by Meyer (Twilight Series and The Host), I needed a different kind of story. Meyer takes it slow. She develops her characters and their feelings and the story moves along at a crawl. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed them all, but I kept hoping for some action. In fact the whole sequence in Italy was one of my favourite parts because I finally felt like we were getting into something and that something exciting was really going to happen.

5/5 Stars