Review: THE HUNGER GAMES

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Book 1 of the The Hunger Games series
Narrated by Carolyn McCormick
Genre: post-apocalyptic urban fantasy, YA
Format: paperback, (unabridged) audiobook

About The Hunger Games:

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before — and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Source: Info in the About The Hunger Games was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2767052-the-hunger-games on 14/07/2012.

Review:

This is my first book-to-movie where I saw the movie first before I read the book. And I still like the book better than the movie, however the movie is not half-bad. In fact it was well done! I would still have preferred it if they stuck to the book religiously but I do recognize that once adapted to movie they have to modify to make it possible to shoot into a movie.

It took a couple of chapters before I could get into the story but once I did, it was smooth sailing and the pace getting quicker towards the end. Having said that, I could only listen as fast as the narrator reads so for the audiobook, the pace could not really be rated for this reason. However, for the paperback, I imagine that the pace could be said to be good with a rating of about 4 out of 5.

Now, I love this book! However, maybe because I enjoyed this book so much that I am now apprehensive that the next book would disappoint me having raised the expectation bar high up.... and maybe because I have read a review in the blogosphere somewhere that the finalle of this trilogy did not live up to expectations. Which is a real bummer! And now I like to keep my happy thoughts of this book a bit longer and decided I'll stop reading here and delay the disappointment and read the rest of the books in this series later rather than sooner... Besides, they did a great job in making the movie of this book, maybe they'll do it again in the next two books, so I'll wait for the movie to come out instead of reading Catching Fire and Mockingjay even though I already got them in my TBR shelves.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 4.5
Character development = 4
Story itself = 4.5
Ending = 4
World building = 5
Cover art = 4
Pace = N/A (11 hrs and 14 mins audiobook)
Plot = 3.5
Narrator = 4.5

Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 cherries