100 Words #4

THE HUNGER GAMES (2008)
I’d be able to better appraise this book’s strengths if I wasn’t as familiar with Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale and its various media adaptations. As it is, this is a tidily-written, exciting-in-spots young adult novel about a bleak future in which teenagers are forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the masses and to remind everyone that the (obviously) evil government is in charge. The best bits lie not in the intentionally-stilted romance (that I am assured gets better,) but in how bluntly Collins uses and writes about violence, particularly compared to its peers.