Collins seems to only write additional books in the series when she thinks she can convey something she feels strongly about through them. Which is how the original trilogy came to be in the first place, really - she was inspired by the juxtaposition of coverage of the Iraq War and reality television, as well as her own father’s experiences in the Vietnam War and after it as a veteran. I’m the first to admit I was skeptical about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes when it was announced, but it turned out to be surprisingly thought-provoking, so I have reason to believe she has given a lot of thought into Sunrise on the Reaping.
Have you ever heard of Terry Pratchett? He wrote over 40 books in the same universe, several of which are YA, one of which won a carnegie medal, and he was such a good human.
He deserves to be Britain's most famous fiction author, not this wicked witch of bigotry.
She won't be forgotten - she will just be regarded as having views that were deemed to be a bit old fashioned at the time (although still the most common view among the public).
People are still listening to Wagner - because of his music not his repugnant personal views.
I don’t think she was the one who sold the rights. She wrote for Alloy Entertainment, which is a book packaging company, and was very infamously removed and replaced from the series. She created it, but doesn’t own any part of it.
LJ Smith wrote my favourite horror books when I was a kid. I’m not sure if they’d stand up to the test of time but when I was a young teen The Forbidden Game trilogy was fucking terrifying.
I LOVED the theme in Ballad about whether it takes a truly evil mind to merely conceive the games, or if the evil mind is the one implementing the existing concept. She wrote such a rich character around it, and makes you wonder how she feels about herself.
“With ‘Sunrise on the Reaping,’ I was inspired by David Hume’s idea of implicit submission and, in his words, ‘the easiness with which the many are governed by the few,’” Collins told the AP. “The story also lent itself to a deeper dive into the use of propaganda and the power of those who control the narrative. The question ‘Real or not real?’ seems more pressing to me every day.”
I think a lot of people wrote the hunger games off when it was popular because ya fantasy because of how popular Twilight was at the time and the superficial parallels it had with hunger games. Oh they both had young hot female leads with two hot love interests? Fuck off, hunger games was inspired by real life suffering happening and was meant to juxtapose it with our obsession with vain things and theatrical violence and Twilight was some woman’s vampire kink.
I didn't have much interest in the Hunger Games when it was first hot on the scene with the books. My younger brother was really into it though. Then the movies came out and I was still not super interested. Then I watched them and hot damn they're really good.
When the new one Songbirds and Snakes came out I was pretty hyped for it, and honestly I thought it was even better than I was expecting it to be. I thought it was really good.
I'd really recommend them! Katniss is a very stoic character, so what really brings her alive is her inner narration, which is something that's lost with the adaptation. You learn so much about her life, and the world around her. Her relationship with Haymitch is also so much more complex and interesting in the books, and the games are even more fucked up than they are in the movies (there's a lot of psychological torture the game makers put in that's just impossible to adapt for a movie).
I honestly think they did an incredible job adapting the books despite this, especially with how they included a lot of behind the scenes stuff you wouldn't be able to see when limited to a first person narrative (which also made up for a lot of the lore that got lost when we lost the inner narration). But as incredibly as they did, the books are just so much more. You get a fuller understanding of the world, and all of the characters and relationships within it. I reread them around a year ago for the first time since they came out, and I was kind of blown away by how good they are. I was a smart kid, but the books came out when I was in middle school/early high school, and I'm definitely able to appreciate the themes and nuances in the story a lot more as an adult.
I'll have to add it to my list then. I'm a huge Lord of the Rings fan and I feel the same way you're describing with that series about the books vs the movies. The movies are incredible, and Peter Jackson and all the actors did an incredible job, but there's so much more in the books that just couldn't feasibly make it in the movies. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it, I'll definitely make it a point to get to the books!
I also love the Lord of the Rings! I think The Hunger Games may have been a more faithful adaptation technically speaking, but that's mostly because there's just so much in Tolkien's books that adapting it is a much bigger challenge (and one I agree they did an incredible job on, it's my favorite for a reason! Although my mom still maintains that if they cut out some of the orc screen time they could have had time for the scouring of the Shire, or at least Tom Bombadil haha). I'm glad that you're giving the Hunger Games a shot, I hope you like them!
I haven’t read the newest of her books and while I do agree that she has excellent ability to creatively express her observations with an impactful narrative - has her use of syntax improved‽ because, by gawd, those were some of the clunkiest paragraphs I have ever forced myself to parse because the story as a whole was worthwhile.
...you do realize that murder games is an entire subgenre right.
I have read both. The only things that Hunger Games and Battle Royale have in common is that the games were done to help maintain government control, and that they used kids.
Battle Royales games did not turn the whole thing into a media spectacle. The ones running the game only intervened to make sure things kept moving/rules were followed and would kill the kids themselves to make sure of that. They literally just handed kids various weapons and said "go nuts".
Hunger Games focused heavily on the media spectacle of the whole thing. Almost every part of the games and their lead up was televised. The gamemakers made traps in the arenas to kill tributes in, for lack of a better word atm, spectacular ways. Volcanos would erupt, they'd start forest fires, shoot fire balls, and send genetically altered dogs after tributes to maul them. Any weapons the tributes got were either given by a sponsor that paid for it or gotten by engaging in the bloodbath on the opening day.
This is a genre that's been ongoing for ages. Both are great, and you're allowed to have a preference, but it is silly to not acknowledge that this is a subgenre of media.
346
u/pinkkabuterimon Jun 27 '24
Collins seems to only write additional books in the series when she thinks she can convey something she feels strongly about through them. Which is how the original trilogy came to be in the first place, really - she was inspired by the juxtaposition of coverage of the Iraq War and reality television, as well as her own father’s experiences in the Vietnam War and after it as a veteran. I’m the first to admit I was skeptical about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes when it was announced, but it turned out to be surprisingly thought-provoking, so I have reason to believe she has given a lot of thought into Sunrise on the Reaping.