Tuesday, March 18 marked the much-anticipated release of “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the fifth novel in the “Hunger Games” saga by Suzanne Collins. The novel features a young Haymitch Abernathy during the historic 50th Hunger Games, in which he is forced to battle to the death against forty-seven other children in a beautiful, yet horrific, arena. Haymitch must constantly toe the line between rascal and rebel, attempting to defy the cruel and twisted nature of the Games without endangering those he loves.
“The Hunger Games” has been one of my favorite books since I was in elementary school, so needless to say I was extremely excited for this book to come out. As much as I love Suzanne Collins, I will admit I was a bit worried this novel would feel redundant. Haymitch’s games are recapped in extreme detail in “Catching Fire,” the second book in the original “Hunger Games” trilogy. A part of me questioned how much new content we could really get from a story we already knew.
How foolish of me to question Suzanne Collins’ genius! Despite knowing Haymitch’s eventual fate from the beginning of the novel, at almost no point did I know what was going to happen next. Collins weaponizes the unreliable narration of the original trilogy to paint the Games in a horrifying new light, forcing readers to question everything they thought they knew about the world. Not only does this book feel incredibly original and refreshing, it adds a new layer to all of the previous books.
The Capitol’s use of propaganda to twist the narrative and invalidate Haymitch’s rebellion is a clear and poignant parallel to the real-world American government’s attempts to erase LGBTQ+ history and marginalized narratives. Suzanne Collins has made it clear in several interviews over the years that she doesn’t write unless she has something new to say — “Sunrise on the Reaping” certainly says a lot about our current political climate. The “Hunger Games” saga has always functioned as a commentary on real issues, and Collins absolutely does not hold back with her critiques of implicit submission and media narratives in her newest novel.
Despite taking place forty years after “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and twenty-four years before the original trilogy, “Sunrise on the Reaping” does not feel out of place sequentially or detract from the established world. Haymitch’s perspective on the Games and his new relationships with established characters add context to the previous books and make his story simultaneously delightful and devastating to read. Collins weaves a careful and genius story that looking back on the previous books, there are nods and references to characters that have only recently been written, enriching the world as a whole and establishing “Sunrise on the Reaping” as an essential part of the cohesive “Hunger Games” narrative. Experiencing Haymitch as a kind and romantic teenager is heart-wrenching with the knowledge of who he later becomes. The novel is jam-packed with dramatic irony that fills readers with simultaneous hope and dread for what is to come.
My one critique of the novel is its pacing. Collins employs a three-act structure with all of her books, with each act having an equal number of chapters. While this technique is very effective for breaking the story up thematically, it makes a lot of moments feel rushed, as though Collins is trying to cram an epic into a limited number of chapters. I’m not sure why she refused to slow down, given that “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” was about a hundred pages longer than “Sunrise on the Reaping.” To me, the rapid pace did not allow many of the tributes’ deaths to hit as hard as they could have if Collins had taken the time to thoroughly acknowledge them.
With all of the reading that I have had to do for class, it has been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a novel so much that I read it in a single day. It has probably been an equally long time since I’ve cried while reading a book. “Sunrise on the Reaping” managed to accomplish both. Though it is immensely difficult to sustain a series for this long without boring the readers or losing the essence of the original story, Collins has once again blown all of my expectations out of the water with her masterful writing. I am going to need several days to recover from the emotional damage this book dealt me, and I cannot wait to revisit the rest of the “Hunger Games” saga with the added nuances that Haymitch’s story provides.
