Final comments on the Hunger Games


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**Seeking to avoid all spoilers for folks who have not read even the first one**

So I have finally finished the full series, and I've made plenty of jokes about how this series is like crack. I got the first one free, but once I started, I couldn't stop. The stories are written with lots of action constantly, so that as a reader, there's always an anxiety building about what happens next. While it's not a challenging read, given that it's intended for the "young adult" crowd, it's definitely well-paced. 
New and unanticipated consequences from the ending of the first volume continue to surprise and intrigue, and when one might be lulled into thinking that the danger is about to be over and both protagonist and reader might get to enjoy a rest, *BAM* some new twist totally changes the situation.

It's a different way tot look at the typical coming of age story - how does a young woman define herself while others constantly seek to define her - brought into a story of political danger, physical conflict, and questions of how to identify and do the right thing and saving the lives of those around her.

I also think that the end was fairly satisfying. After all the anxiety throughout the series, if it ended too tidily, I think the reader would have felt betrayed. But within the context of this world that Suzanne Collins has created, I feel that it was appropriate, and definitely provided some closure. The world is left very different from how it was introduced in the first volume, in some ways better and in some ways worse.

One of the unanticipated consequences was one I discovered while walking in the park yesterday for a 6.5 mile hike. After having read this series as well as reading some of the volumes of George R R Martin's Song of Fire and Ice, the woods and the small distant sounds can take on entirely new meaning. Was that crack a walnut falling? a Capitol hover craft? a Career? the Hound? one of the Others? I did my best to imitate the silent footfalls in the forest of both Katniss and Arya, as they seek to evade and outsmart their opponents and enemies. Clearly this is the product of an over-active imagination. Certainly quickens the pulse!

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