You'd think by now I would have learned. Don't read anything written within the past 50 years because 9 times out of 10 you'll wish you hadn't. That's always the case, and yet again, unfortunately I was duped. I haven't felt this misled since I mustered up the money to go to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 in theaters (I haven't been back to the theater since).
This society just doesn't have the ability to produce something worth reading. True, every now and then something legitimate will arise, and I guess that's why I hold out hope, thinking I may have found that 1 out of 10 which will be worth my time.
I guess that's why I was willing to read The Hunger Games. So many people had said it was good, the movie trailer peaked my interest, and the plot seemed fascinating. I was wondering how such a story would play out. So I took the plunge.
I am purposefully going to ruin the ending (though it's as simplistic and poorly written as it's end is obvious) in hopes that will keep some of you from reading it. When I said I was wondering how such a story would play out, apparently so was the author because while I enjoyed the first half of the book, it was a very interesting idea and the characters were well developed, solving the problems within the world that the author had created was well beyond her capabilities. I couldn't believe how any sane writer would have the lack of authorial decency to put forth the drivel which was the second half of the book.
Plot holes big enough to drive a semi truck through, complete disregard for the nature and attributes of the characters, total lack of reality or semblance of realistic progression are pretty much what you'll find if you read this.
Not to mention graphic and potentially very disturbing scenes of the sadistic death and torture of children by other children, all watched by hundreds of thousands of people live on TV and then replayed over and over again as a form of entertainment. Honestly, the fact that this sort of thing is being written for young adults to read is beyond disturbing, it is gut-wrenchingly wrong. The thought of my stable and balanced younger siblings reading this is scary enough, I shudder to consider what it would do to the fragile psyche's of children already struggling with reality and morality.
Basically the story is that of 24 children (who of course are nothing at all like any children any of us have ever met) who are put in a massive arena to fight to the death for the pleasure of some rich capitalists. While that idea is in fact interesting if not grotesque, the author is entirely incapable of doing anything interesting with the plot and the last 200 or so pages is filled with uninteresting puke into a bucket romance as 22 of the combatants are killed off in uninteresting ways, and the 2 characters who obviously fall in love and are able to defy all the odds win the day in staunchly uninteresting fashion.
I believe that nobody older than seven who has ever read a book before didn't see the plot "twists" coming. I was so annoyed by the continual use of the same content in the book I felt like I could have easily skipped half the chapters in the middle of the book and missed nothing. Same girl still not sure which of two guys she loves, who somehow even though she's 16 can hit anything in the world with an arrow even if she's dehydrated and hasn't eaten in two days, unless it's really important in which case she'll miss *please note the sarcasm*.
At the end of the book she and her boyfriend have succeeded in killing off the other 22 trained killers with one arrow, some poisoned berry's, and some apparently very scary bee's.
Needless to say, the main characters don't die, the main characters do fall in love, and of course they win everything even though they are helplessly incompetent, incapable, outmatched, and outmaneuvered.
Save your time and read some Robert Louis Stevenson...
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