I don’t know about you, but I find that there is always a hole in my knowledge no matter how complete I think it might be. There’s always more to learn. Such was the case when I realized that one of the more important modern science fiction authors had somehow slipped through the cracks of my reading education – Octavia Butler. So, I picked up a copy of Seed to Harvest, which is a compilation of four of the books in her Patternist series. So far, I’ve only read the first, Wild Seed, and it’s apparent to me that the series needs to be read in its entirety before I can express an opinion.

But this is supposed to be a post about The Hunger Games, right? So it is. The trailers for the movie caught my attention and the book had been on my radar for awhile. When I finished Wild Seed, I decided to pick up The Hunger Games hoping to have it read before the movie came out.

The timing turned out not to be a problem. I started the book late Saturday night, and finished it Sunday evening despite taking several hours off to work on my never-ending (so my wife says) bathroom remodeling project.

And that pretty much gives away my strongest impression of the book. It’s a page turner. Suzanne Collins has an excellent feel for tension. Almost every chapter ends in such a way that you can’t help but think “I’ve got to read one… more… chapter to see what happens.”

The story itself has echoes of The Long Walk and perhaps Running Man as well (must I compare everything to Stephen King?). The story is fairly simple and straightforward, there’s not much in the way of surprise or plot twists. Really, as I said before, it’s a study in tension. If you are a writer and want to get ideas about how to increase the tension in your own stories, this is a definite read.

I only had a few small negative impressions as I read. First, and most distracting to me, is that Collins spends quite a bit of time early in the book world-building. Not so much the overall world (though she does some of that too) but the protagonist’s situation and life before the story really begins. She really works overtime to set up her protagonist, reiterating several events and habits of her past life to the point that the repetition becomes an issue. As a result, I thought the beginning of the book dragged a bit and found myself impatient to get to the actual “game”. Her approach early on backfired for me in that, instead of caring more about her character as she was clearly wanting me to do, I found myself getting annoyed at the obvious attempt to manipulate my sentiment.

I also found the ending to be somewhat unsatisfying, although this is probably as much a result of my expectations as anything else. I thought that this was a standalone book and that the rest of the series had been tacked on after the success of this book. That is not the case. This book ends rather abruptly with several questions (mostly revolving around the love interests which she has woven into the story) still unresolved.

Finally – and I realize that this is a matter of taste – the book is written in present tense and I found myself occasionally being pulled out of the story because of my awareness of it. It seemed to happen at the beginning of chapters and I’m not sure if it was because the writing was a little rougher in those spots, or because I took a mental break when I ended a chapter and therefore the tense drew my attention when I started the next. It tended to only last a paragraph or two, but it happened often enough that I was aware of it.

All in all, a fun read. Not the deep, thought provoking writing that I’ve found in Octavia Butler’s book, but entertaining nonetheless. And for writers there is definitely something to learn (tension!) from this book that makes it worth a look.

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