Chapter Five: The Hunger Games

Now that everyone's been talking about Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games for four years, I finally decided to read it and see what all the fuss was about.  While I will admit that the quality of the writing is not amazing, I was hooked by the end of the first chapter.  The plot is fast-paced and compelling, to be sure, with plenty to thrill and terrify and keep a reader turning the pages, but I was also intrigued by the book's heroine, Katniss.  It's nice to have a strong female character, and Katniss is complex and multi-dimensional as well.  She's not always sure about what she feels and whether she's doing the right thing, and in her grappling with these issues of self-evaluation she becomes a really interesting character.  By the end of the book, I was left hungering (if you will) for the next installment, with the characters still haunting my mind.