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Girls on fire
Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic, 2008. Amazon | Powell's
Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2009. Amazon | Powell's
I am probably the last person in the world to discover just how awesome these books are, but let me say, for the record, that these are two of the best books I've read in a while. If you haven't read them, you should. End of discussion.
Who am I kidding, that's never the end of the discussion. To wit, these books follow Katniss Everdeen, a teenage girl trying to provide for her family in a dictatorial, post-apocalyptic former United States, now divided into thirteen districts plus the Capital and called Panem. (And yes, that's a very pointed irony.) Seventy-four years before the story starts, the Capital's forces crushed a rebellion led by District 13, which was destroyed, and in memorial of that victory every district must send two children to the capital each year to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. Panis et circenses, indeed.
The first book ends with Katniss and Peeta, the male tribute from their District 12 (clearly Appalachia), having defied the authorities to co-win the Games, and the second picks up six months later at the start of their victory tour through Panem, which is inching ever closer to rebellion. Katniss is caught in the middle in more ways than one, and watching her negotiate her lack of choices in this book was wrenching, and all too real. I won't give away the twists in Catching Fire, but they are truly horrible in an all too credible way.
I loved Katniss; she's an appealing protagonist with a fine sense of herself, and her clear-eyed perceptions of authority are a treat, to say nothing of her dark humor. The supporting characters, even the supposedly shallow people from the Capital, are great too, though by the end of the second book just about everyone's survival is in doubt. Peeta, Katniss' competitor turned ally and love interest, is also a marvel; he's clearly a fundamentally good person without being wishy-washy, which is no small trick. And by the end of Catching Fire I loved Haymitch and the other half-broken victor tributes unreasonably too. Collins has points to make about the way we live now, but she makes them subtly, without marring her story, and I enjoyed the mixture of technologies in which Katniss and everyone around her live: ridiculously advanced coexisting with stuff out of the 19th century, or earlier. It's also fun, in a macabre sort of way, to try to identify which parts of the States became which Districts. My one complaint is that there seemed to be at least two very clear opportunities to have unambiguously queer characters in Catching Fire (well, three if one goes by stereotypes), neither of which opportunities the text takes up. This complaint aside, we need more books like these, and more protagonists like Katniss. I can't wait for the last book.
Hale, Shannon. Forest Born. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009. Amazon | Powell's
I've loved Hale's Books of Bayern, and her books in general, for a while, and I was overjoyed to find that she had written a fourth. Hale reminds me of Megan Whalen Turner, actually, in her ability to pack a very sophisticated story into a fairly simple tegument, and I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Rin, the youngest sister of Razo (the protagonist of River Secrets, the third book), accompanies her brother back to the capital of Bayern to get out of the Forest and to find out who she is, and along the way she, along with Razo, Isi, Enna and Dasha, are drawn to Bayern's border with Kel, where an old enemy lies in wait. Giving away what exactly transpires really would ruin the book, but I will say that Rin's self-discovery is central to the story, in a completely believable, and at times rather painful, way. I like that the books of Bayern give women and girls agency without doing too much violence to their fairy-tale-made-real atmosphere, and Rin's dilemma, and triumphs, were hard-won, and utterly believable.
That said, though, the copy editing was frightful at times; a few sentences simply don't make sense as printed. I also have a problem with the cover of the book, and with the reissued covers of the earlier volumes. This page from Hale's website, to illustrate, has the old and new covers of River Secrets: the old version is a charming, atmospheric painting, while the new version is bad photoshop with painfully white teenagers. Given the brouhaha over Bloomsbury's USA cover for Liar, one would hope their marketing department has learned...but clearly not. I'm not claiming that the Bayern books are a multi-racial paradise, because they're not, but there's more diversity of skin tone within the books than the new covers would lead one to think, and the new covers look trashy on top of that. These books are anything but, and Hale and her readers deserve better.
Collins, Suzanne. Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2009. Amazon | Powell's
I am probably the last person in the world to discover just how awesome these books are, but let me say, for the record, that these are two of the best books I've read in a while. If you haven't read them, you should. End of discussion.
Who am I kidding, that's never the end of the discussion. To wit, these books follow Katniss Everdeen, a teenage girl trying to provide for her family in a dictatorial, post-apocalyptic former United States, now divided into thirteen districts plus the Capital and called Panem. (And yes, that's a very pointed irony.) Seventy-four years before the story starts, the Capital's forces crushed a rebellion led by District 13, which was destroyed, and in memorial of that victory every district must send two children to the capital each year to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. Panis et circenses, indeed.
The first book ends with Katniss and Peeta, the male tribute from their District 12 (clearly Appalachia), having defied the authorities to co-win the Games, and the second picks up six months later at the start of their victory tour through Panem, which is inching ever closer to rebellion. Katniss is caught in the middle in more ways than one, and watching her negotiate her lack of choices in this book was wrenching, and all too real. I won't give away the twists in Catching Fire, but they are truly horrible in an all too credible way.
I loved Katniss; she's an appealing protagonist with a fine sense of herself, and her clear-eyed perceptions of authority are a treat, to say nothing of her dark humor. The supporting characters, even the supposedly shallow people from the Capital, are great too, though by the end of the second book just about everyone's survival is in doubt. Peeta, Katniss' competitor turned ally and love interest, is also a marvel; he's clearly a fundamentally good person without being wishy-washy, which is no small trick. And by the end of Catching Fire I loved Haymitch and the other half-broken victor tributes unreasonably too. Collins has points to make about the way we live now, but she makes them subtly, without marring her story, and I enjoyed the mixture of technologies in which Katniss and everyone around her live: ridiculously advanced coexisting with stuff out of the 19th century, or earlier. It's also fun, in a macabre sort of way, to try to identify which parts of the States became which Districts. My one complaint is that there seemed to be at least two very clear opportunities to have unambiguously queer characters in Catching Fire (well, three if one goes by stereotypes), neither of which opportunities the text takes up. This complaint aside, we need more books like these, and more protagonists like Katniss. I can't wait for the last book.
Hale, Shannon. Forest Born. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2009. Amazon | Powell's
I've loved Hale's Books of Bayern, and her books in general, for a while, and I was overjoyed to find that she had written a fourth. Hale reminds me of Megan Whalen Turner, actually, in her ability to pack a very sophisticated story into a fairly simple tegument, and I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Rin, the youngest sister of Razo (the protagonist of River Secrets, the third book), accompanies her brother back to the capital of Bayern to get out of the Forest and to find out who she is, and along the way she, along with Razo, Isi, Enna and Dasha, are drawn to Bayern's border with Kel, where an old enemy lies in wait. Giving away what exactly transpires really would ruin the book, but I will say that Rin's self-discovery is central to the story, in a completely believable, and at times rather painful, way. I like that the books of Bayern give women and girls agency without doing too much violence to their fairy-tale-made-real atmosphere, and Rin's dilemma, and triumphs, were hard-won, and utterly believable.
That said, though, the copy editing was frightful at times; a few sentences simply don't make sense as printed. I also have a problem with the cover of the book, and with the reissued covers of the earlier volumes. This page from Hale's website, to illustrate, has the old and new covers of River Secrets: the old version is a charming, atmospheric painting, while the new version is bad photoshop with painfully white teenagers. Given the brouhaha over Bloomsbury's USA cover for Liar, one would hope their marketing department has learned...but clearly not. I'm not claiming that the Bayern books are a multi-racial paradise, because they're not, but there's more diversity of skin tone within the books than the new covers would lead one to think, and the new covers look trashy on top of that. These books are anything but, and Hale and her readers deserve better.