Girl on fire

I finished reading the Hunger Games series over Christmas break and my over all opinion is "was not impressed." The very first problem I have is that the story is written in preset tense, making it harder to read and slow going. The main character is called Katniss Everdeen and the first book starts with her being drafted into the National Hunger Games.

Spoiler alert, if you have not read the series and plan to do not keep reading.

The Hunger Games are basically a gladiator style game were two children, one boy and one girl, are "randomly" selected from each of the twelve districts and then thrown into an arena to fight to the death. The arenas are anything but normal. The Capitol (the seat of power that controls the twelve districts in slave like fashion) has created pods that a gamekeeper (a person whose job is to make the games more interesting) has control over. The pods have anything from deadly poisons to rabid monkeys. The terrain cannot be trusted because it is under the complete control of the gamekeepers as well. At one point in the first book they set parts of the arena on fire to force the tributes into confrontations.

The Hunger Games end when Katniss saves Peeta (the male tribute from district 12). Instead of killing Peeta like the Capitol wants her too Katniss has poisons berries in her pocket and they both plan to eat them, leaving no Victor, when the head gamekeeper stops the game. That one small action ignites a barely suppressed rebellion against the Capitol, because if one young girl can outsmart the Capitol their is hope that the districts can.

Basically the entire theme of the book is to escape repression and overthrow the government. However in the very last book Katniss kills the next President when she learns the President killed her younger sister. Along with killing Prim (Katniss's younger sister) the President Coin has planned several events that lead to the deaths of innocents, making her worse than the current President who did not hide his own atrocities.

The book ends with the surviving Victors (the people who won the Hunger Games in previous years) decided to hold one last Hunger Game with the children from the Capitol (Capitol residents were exempt from the Hunger Games, since they were only used to keep the districts from rebelling). When everything is said and done they dictatorship is just traded for another one, showing that there will always be a group of people suppressed.

Depressing. Plus it was written in present tense which automatically makes it crap. Crap with a good point, but still crap.