May the odds be ever in your favor
Familiar of the title? If you are, then you can guess where this post is going.
Yes, I'm once again reviewing a book. Another best-selling trilogy, another late-reading.
Let's the game begin!
When The Hunger Games movie first came out in the cinema, people somehow started updating their status (blackberry messenger, twitter, facebook, etc) with the infamous tagline: "May the odds be ever in your favor". I was dumb, I didn't know what that meant, even where the saying came from. I was clueless. But I eventually knew it was a line from the currently popular movie (back then), The Hunger Games. Didn't take long for me to found out that it was yet another adaptation of a book. So I decided I'd pass the movie, and took my time to read the book before actually watching the movie.
It was only last week I remembered about this series again. Lot of thing had happened these past few weeks, I'd only been able to sit down and breathe peacefully a couple days ago. Long story short, I got the digital books in my hand (well, in my iPod, to be precise), all three of them, and started reading the first of all three. I knew what would happen, I knew the characters, but I didn't know what went in the middle. So it's only the beginning and the end that I was fully aware of. The rest was still a mystery, so it was all good for me, I was still as curious as I could get to begin reading the hunger games.
The main premise of the book, in my opinion, is quite original. I could actually see the world we live in right now turn out to be a barbaric world like the one our lovely characters live. It's also a form of exaggeration of what really happen in the current world. As I see it, the world right now is basically ruled by so few people. We subconsciously live under colonialism of the first world. But good thing is, we can still feel the so-called freedom and we're not thrown in some conditioned arena where we have to fight to death in order to survive. Lucky us, right?
Still, its premise is disturbing for me from the very beginning. A country, ruled by one region, where the Capitol is the master and the rest are the puppets isn't very becoming. It somehow feels just plainly wrong. Power, when it's wrongly used, that's what happened. Oh, how I hate how power consumes people, eating them from inside.
Never mind, though. Cause we have heroes! Katniss, the girl who was in fire, will make a change!
Or so I thought. and yes, I bet that will happen at the end of book 3, which I haven't read. But the first book managed to give its readers a good look on the deadly game, leave an impression strong enough to make sense of everything that has occurred, and the next events that will take place in the second book. What I love about hunger games are how detailed the author explain each of the districts, how she made me understand why people acted that way instead of the other way. The hunger games itself is inhumane, it's a flat-out disdain of human rights. But we see our hero and heroine, trying hard to stay humane, to stay sane, in the middle of complete madness. I fell in love with Peeta in the process, though it's hard for me to accept the fact that he is not a strong, powerful hero, like heroes we usually get in other books/movies. Nonetheless, I love Peeta.
The book has also successfully delivered some emotional moments perfectly, especially the moment when one of the contestant, Rue, died. I shed a tear (or two), and felt the rage Katniss had in her heart. Two thumps up for this! :) The whole fake lovers or oh-not-so-fake moments were lovely though quite sad, since it's only Peeta who has not acted since the very start. Unrequited love for our hero, another first. I can see that Katniss will have a hard time deciding where her heart is at, and whom does it belong to, and there will be another love triangle where Katniss will sway from one boy to the other boy, break one heart and the other. This part of the story, is just super predictable. Nothing surprising. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I'm just saying it's a normal thing to happen in a scheme like this. A girl, get caught in two boys, while having to change the world. I also enjoyed their hunting-killing each other moments, shuddered of the thoughts if these were reality. I've never been good with imagining fighting scenes, but the author somehow manage to choke them down on me.
In conclusion, I still think the book is worth the time I spent reading. All those mid-nights I spent out in the venture with Katniss and Peeta are certainly not wasted. I can't wait to read Catching Fire, and maybe I'll soon watch the movie, and decide whether the movie ruins the book, or it lives up to my expectation. I don't set the bar high, cause believe me, no matter how skilled, film-makers always ruin a novel by adapting it to a real-life movie. :) Noone completely nailed it, until now. Not even Harry Potter, not even The Life of Pi. But that part, we'll save that for later.
Till then, may the odds be ever in your favor!
