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‘The Hunger Games’ Was Always This Dark, You Just Forgot
‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ reminds us that ‘The Hunger Games’ was never just another YA dystopia — it was a warning
I finished Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins last night.
The Hunger Games prequel about Katniss’ mentor, Haymitch Abernathy, was exactly what 12-year-old me had been waiting for. A stunning addition to The Hunger Games library with just as much nuance and action as its predecessors.
Sunrise on the Reaping is gruesome. It features some incredibly violent deaths and bleak outcomes. I’ve seen some commentators on social media express that they think this is the last Hunger Games book because of how grim the story was. That this was Collins “punishing” us for making Tom Blyth/Coriolanus Snow fan-edits and for displaying “capitol behavior” in wanting another Hunger Games book.
But do any of you guys actually remember The Hunger Games?
The original books are bleak- far gorier than the movies. The mutt-dogs that hunt down Cato, Peeta, and Katniss at the end of the first games? In addition to tearing apart and eating Cato alive, they are designed to look like the other dead tributes- a detail that was lost in the films. Those mutts also led to Peeta losing a…
