The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay)
Suzanne Collins, 2008
Science fiction Young adultRomance
A girl volunteers for a televised death match to save her sister, then quietly turns the cameras into a weapon. A tense, plainspoken first-person voice keeps the dread close, with defiance rising as the televised arena turns into a stage for power.
Feels like dread and defiance. About power, war and society.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you want a fast, YA science-fiction story about survival, loyalty, and public defiance. The trilogy is steeped in violence and grief, and the war sections of the final book are especially bleak.
Why read it
It shows how entertainment and war can feed each other, and gives you a heroine whose defiance is practical rather than grand.
A page from the book
One old gesture, rarely used, that means three things at once.
Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don’t expect it because I don’t think of District 12 as a place that cares about me. But a shift has occurred since I stepped up to take Prim’s place, and now it seems I have become someone precious. At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love. Suzanne Collins.Collins got the idea channel-surfing between reality TV and war coverage, and has named the Roman gladiator games as the arena's direct ancestor.
Books that feel like this
More by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins, 2008
In a dystopian America, survival means a dangerous dance between rebellion and the crushing power of a totalitarian Capitol.
Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins, 2010
The final Hunger Games volume: the girl who survived the state's televised death match is now the face of a war she never wanted to lead.
Sunrise on the Reaping
Suzanne Collins, 2025
Before he was District 12's ruined victor, Haymitch Abernathy was a boy with a girl, a family, and a reaping. The 50th Hunger Games, from the inside.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay) for me?
- You may like it if you want a fast, YA science-fiction story about survival, loyalty, and public defiance. The trilogy is steeped in violence and grief, and the war sections of the final book are especially bleak.
- What is The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay) like?
- A tense, plainspoken first-person voice keeps the dread close, with defiance rising as the televised arena turns into a stage for power. Feels like dread and defiance. About power, war and society.
- What should I read after The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay)?
- If you liked The Hunger Games Trilogy (Hunger Games / Catching Fire / Mockingjay), try Golden Son (Pierce Brown), The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood) and A Storm of Swords (George R.R. Martin).
A taste of the feed
The endearing details that make a monster seem human.
He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, off key, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all.
The Handmaid's Tale · Margaret Atwood
What an army looks like when it brings its spinning wheels.
“Smallwood sent Bannen and me wide around the van to catch a peek at the main body,” Kedge went on. “There was no end of them. They’re moving slow as a frozen river, four, five miles a day, but they don’t look like they mean to go back to their villages neither. More’n half were women and children, and they were driving their animals before them, goats, sheep, even aurochs dragging sledges. They’d loaded up with bales of fur and sides of meat, cages of chickens, butter chums and spinning wheels, every damn thing they own. The mules and garrons was so heavy laden you’d think their backs would break. The women as well.”
A Storm of Swords · George R.R. Martin
When the world shrinks, the memory of a face can feel like an orbit.
The stars seem a lot closer now. Closer than the three hundred trillion miles that separate us. Close enough to touch, for me to touch them, for them to touch me. They’re as close to me as his breath had been.
The 5th wave (The 5th Wave #1) · Richard Yancey
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