The Hunger Games- Suzanne Collins

Some authors use the world around them to predict the future, and sometimes the future predicted is not exactly what modern mankind expected. Suzanne Collins predicts the future in her novel, The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games was actually recommended to me by a friend. She had not actually read the book but had heard from someone else that it was a very interesting read. I took her word for it and found myself swept away by the powerful message hidden between The Hunger Games’s hardback covers.
The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen, a sixteen-year-old girl who provides for her family. Katniss has a younger sister, twelve-year-old Prim, and a mother, who is ridden by grief and cannot provide for herself. Katniss’s father had died four years previously in an explosion in the coal mine, where he worked. Katniss and her family live in the future, in the place known as Panem.
Panem is the area once known as North America. It has a center, called the Capitol, surrounded by twelve outlying districts. There were originally thirteen districts, but when the thirteenth district attempted a revolt, they were immediately crushed. The twelve districts are surrounded by a huge gate. Beyond this gate lies the wilderness, a forest hiding mutated monsters. The Capitol rules the vast gated landscape through brute force and cruel methods. One way the Capitol shows its power is by putting on the Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a barbaric contest in which two tributes, one boy and one girl aged 12 through 18, are chosen to fight to death on live TV. To win means fame and wealth for themselves and their district. To lose means certain death.
It is into this contest that Katniss finds herself thrust. When her sister is chosen through raffle to participate, Katniss steps forward to take her place. The other tribute is Peeta Mellark, the son of a baker. Once arriving in the Capitol, Katniss and Peeta are instructed to act like star-crossed lovers for the camera. This show gains them the much-needed popularity that provides them the sponsors who pay for them to receive useful tools during the competition. Both tributes know they should be planning how to best kill each other, but the act surprises them and they actually begin to fall in love. As the number of contestants begins to diminish, Katniss and Peeta fear the day when they will have to kill each other, if by chance, they are not killed first. The Hunger Games is Katniss’s struggle with death, love, war, and her dilemma as to which one she must follow.
I really liked the suspense and drama in this book. Just when the action seemed to settle down, Collins throws in a twist that makes the story all the more interesting. The only thing I could find to critique about The Hunger Games was the ending- there is a sequel to the novel and I was itching for more.