Suzanne Collins continues her expansion of the Hunger Games mythology with this dive into the backstory of Haymitch Abernathy. If you’re rusty on your Hunger Games lore, Haymitch is the bitter, drunk prior winner of the Games who acted as a mentor to Katniss in the prime trilogy of novels. The new novel answers the question of how he got so broken, presenting him as a fresh-faced teen drafted into the 50th edition of the Games due to a freak series of events.
Buy Sunrise on the Reaping (A Hunger Games Novel)Following the blueprint first laid down in The Hunger Games, we follow the life of a teen from rural District 12 who is selected to be a tribute to the murderous games organized by the pompous ruling class of the Capitol. The only change is that the idle rich decide to spice things up for the special Quarter Quell (once every 25 years) by ordering twice as many tributes from the subservient Districts, requiring four tributes each. Familiar faces from the original trilogy pop up, albeit 25 years younger, including President Snow, Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, and stylist Effie Trinket. Given Plutarch’s intriguing duplicitous nature, he’s the most obvious choice for a future origin novel, and indeed he seems to get the most page time here of any returning characters intersecting with Haymitch.
This is the fifth Hunger Games novel and the second one exploring the origins of secondary characters from the original trilogy. Collins broke new ground with her prior effort, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, but here it feels like she’s just recycling old material, taking us through the standard paces of the reaping of tributes, their preparation for the Games, and their grisly combat in the arena. Ballad painted the evil President Coriolanus Snow as a complex, fascinating younger character, revealing surprising depth to the previously one-dimensional villain and following the games from behind the scenes of the ruling powers. Sunrise simply doesn’t have any surprises, it’s just a younger Haymitch, and since we already know he a) survives the Games and b) wishes he hadn’t, drama is in short supply.
While Collins tread fresh ground in her prior spinoff title, Reaping just feels like a retread, with Haymitch little more than a male Katniss as he begrudginly battles his way through the Games while pining for his District 12 sweetheart. The setup also takes far too long, especially since most readers will have been down that similar road before in the original trilogy, with the Games finally kicking off past the midpoint of the book. Fans of the series may rejoice in another round in the arena, but for this Battle Royale fan, it will always seem like a direct ripoff, whether intentional or not. Collins is an entertaining writer, and she keeps the new Games as tense as possible given that we already know the victor, but character building is in short supply and the outcome is never in question.
