Cannonball! Book #1 Leaves Me Hungry For More!

Please Note: I'm not quite sure yet of how my reviews will work--it will be an evolving process. You know, don't judge a book by its cover, and whatnot.

CANNONBALL READ 2011
BOOK #1: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

If my staying up until 5:00 in the morning to finish reading The Hunger Games is any indication, it's an action-packed, nail-biting, page-turner of a book.

The first in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy, The Hunger Games introduces us to a futuristic North American police state where, once a year, 24 randomly-selected teenagers are forced to fight to the death in a live broadcast. At the center of the story is our first-person narrator, Katniss Everdeen, who finds herself competing in the Hunger Games--literally fighting for her life.

It would be easy, in a story like this, to make the protagonist completely unlikeable--after all, Katniss is both stubborn and selfless, which (if written poorly) could make her the whiniest woman in the world. But Collins has managed to produce a clever fighter of a girl, who makes me want to learn to how build a fire out of nothing and then wire-snare a squirrel.

Not really so much the squirrel thing.

But the book really does keep you on edge: I found myself exclaiming aloud, into the silence of the wee morning hours. Gasps of shock and "No! She's going to--" kept me turning page after page. I felt the tension of survival in the wilderness right along with Katniss. And while it has its occasional predictable moments and some overly detailed dresses and feasts (the first part of the book reads more young adult than the rest), the book as a whole is an action-adventure-romance with frequent head-spinning twists.

I am looking very much forward to reading the other two books in the trilogy, and a lot of that comes from not knowing exactly where Collins is going to go with the story--and I mean that in a good way. There are certain paths for the characters that you can see her laying the groundwork for, but the rest is a mystery and that's fantastic! I'm also excited, partly, because I love a book that's part of a series--if it's done well, and I'm left craving more, it's always exciting to know there actually is more.

That of course means I need to go buy the rest of the series. Better get a move on.