Sunrise on the Reaping

I’ll say right away that I’d been waiting for this book for a long time and was genuinely excited to read it — I consider myself a Hunger Games fan (I’ve watched all the movies multiple times, read all the books multiple times, and have them in my library). Unfortunately, my excitement didn’t last long.

The first thing that caught my eye was the physical book itself — the sparse design and poor quality paper, even though it was reasonably priced.

As I kept reading and running into problems, I realised something was seriously wrong. The language is extremely simple and almost silly — it felt more like reading a script than an actual book. The previous books, as far as I remember, were well-written and easy to read. At first I thought the problem was the translation, but then I watched reviews on YouTube and people confirmed the same issue exists in the English original.

The book was also frankly boring. The Games themselves only started somewhere in the middle and lasted maybe 100-120 pages, with some time also dedicated to Haymitch’s life after the Games. Even those descriptions were extremely sparse and rushed. The author didn’t take the time to develop any of the characters or make me, as a reader, connect with anyone — which meant I felt absolutely nothing when a bunch of children died. It just felt like text, with no emotion behind it.

Collins also crammed references to the previous books in wherever she could. It’s a nice touch in theory, but none of it offered any real insight or gave me anything new to feel.

President Snow is a whole other problem. For some reason, the author decided to completely rewrite his character and present him as a totally different person — one who has nothing in common with either the young Snow from the earlier books or the old Snow we know. At some point he starts confiding in young Haymitch and basically telling him the whole story of his relationship with Lucy Gray. And then Snow literally lets everyone who ever rebelled against him walk away alive, while simultaneously working on important Capitol projects. This completely breaks the logic of the later books, where Snow hunts down and eliminates anyone — smart, strong, or dangerous — who ever dared to challenge him.

I can only hope the filmmakers will fix Collins’ mistakes and improve the story — otherwise it’s going to be a disaster.

What we end up with is a book with very poor writing, a plot that doesn’t fit with the rest of the series, and flat characters you can’t bring yourself to care about. The political themes Collins touches on were clear enough, but they felt underdeveloped and unexplored.