The Hunger Games series is four books long (including a prequel called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes) and it is about a sixteen-year-old girl named Katniss Everdeen. She is chosen by the leaders of her country to fight in an outdoor gladiatorial game where her fellow contestants are between the ages of twelve and eighteen–this game is called the Hunger Games, which is where the series gets its name.

In The Hunger Games, the first book in the series, Katniss is challenged with the task of surviving the arena in the seventy-fourth Games. At a ceremony called the reaping, Katniss volunteered to take her sister’s place in the Games when twelve-year-old Primrose Everdeen’s name gets selected from a large glass ball called a reaping ball. Katniss is then whisked away to the Capitol, the ruling city of her country (Panem, which is a place split up into twelve districts and the Capitol). There, she is prepared for the Games; donning a fiery costume for a public event called the tribute parade, performing in an interview with a man named Caesar Flickerman, and undergoing intense training to learn the skills she’ll need to know for the Games. The place where they acquire those skills is called the Training Center and the tributes (the competitors) learn how to do things like throwing knives, identifying edible food, tying knots, wielding weapons, and more! At the end of training, they get to showcase all these skills in a private fifteen minute session with the Gamemakers (the people who come up with the challenges the tributes will face in the arena). The Gamemakers give them scores based on how well they did in their session, the score of twelve being the best, and one being the worst.

Katniss is then dumped into the arena where she has to fight for her life to be the last tribute standing. After all, the last tribute standing wins and gets showered with gifts, money, and luxury items for the rest of his or her life. She has to face down tough competition, such as Cato, the brutal boy from District Two and Thresh, the surly male from District Eleven. In addition, she has to deal with her injured ally, Peeta Mellark, the boy from her district, who also happens to be in love with her. All throughout the duration of this fast-paced, action packed novel, readers ask the crucial question: Will Katniss be able to make it out of the Games alive?

I don’t want to spoil the book’s glorious ending, so I won’t say anything else. Part of the reason the Hunger Games is such an awesome read is that the characters are so believable and I found myself on the edge of my seat, totally immersed in the story the whole time. I definitely give this book a rating of five out of five and it’s a wonderful novel for anyone who enjoys action, romance, and tragedy all packed together into one, complex storyline.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.