SUNRISE ON THE REAPING--Collins goes 5 for 5

Spoilers ahead

17 years after releasing THE HUNGER GAMES, Collins has gone on to finish the original trilogy and publish two prequels. With a series like this it’s always fair to ask whether the production merits it or if the creator is just milking the audience for a few extra bones. In most cases it’s the latter.

Granted I’m a bit of a homer for this series, but it’s always stood head and shoulders above its peers, and while it did come out at the peak of the YA fiction boom, it was the rare property that had something more to say beyond “Optimistic teenagers defeat jaded adults with the power of friendship.” For my money it was a great installment in a series that has yet to miss. (None of you are shocked that I feel this way.)

Why does this book work? What does it have to say that hasn’t already been said? Let’s take a look at the summary and examine these questions.

The World

In the grand scheme of things, this book takes place 40 years after THE BALLAD OF SONGBIRDS AND SNAKES (BOSS) and 24 years before THE HUNGER GAMES (THG). There are no in-world markers to indicate the year relative to our own, we’re only told that it’s set “centuries” in the future; the United States of America no longer exists and has long been replaced by the new nation of Panem, consisting of 13 districts and a Capitol.

At some point there was a civil war, where the districts rebelled against the abusive Capitol, but the Capitol won when they blew District 13 off the map. (Each District provides a different resource, and 13 produced weapons including nukes). As punishment, every year the Districts are forced to celebrate the Capitol’s victory by sending two teens to die in The Hunger Games.

Whoever wins will get free money and food for life. These are the terms of the Districts’ surrender. The current president of Panem is Coriolanus Snow, who was the protagonist of BOSS, and the villain of the series. He uses propaganda and cunning to stay in power, often poisoning people who maneuver against him or disappoint his efforts.

Plot Summary

BOSS took place during the 10th Hunger Games. SOTR begins on the morning of the 50th Games. As part of the Games’ charter, every 25 years they hold a “Quarter Quell,” with special rules. For the 50th Games they are doubling the number of condemned kids (Tributes), giving them all much worse odds.

We drop in on District 12, and our focal character is Haymitch Abernathy. Readers of the trilogy will already know that he wins this year, and when THG rolls around, he’s the world-weary mentor for District 12, constantly drowning his sorrows in alcohol. For now he’s a healthy teen in a poor family, celebrating his 16th birthday which unfortunately lands on Reaping Day.

During the events of CATCHING FIRE (CF), Katniss and Peeta watched recorded footage of the 50th Hunger Games, so the reader already has an idea of what happens; Haymitch gets reaped, he enters the games, he has a brief alliance, and then he wins by attrition. What they didn’t know is that what they saw…was a lie.

Haymitch’s name didn’t get drawn in the beginning, but the boy who did ended up trying to flee, and the cops shot him in the head. A riot broke out and Haymitch got in the middle of it; as punishment he was selected to replace the dead boy, and the managers faked drawing his name for a recorded broadcast. From there his fate was sealed.

What follows is, for the most part, a rather conventional process for the Games; Haymitch and his fellow Tributes hop a train to the Capitol where they learn some basics about combat and arena survival. We meet several familiar faces from elsewhere in the series (more on that in a minute) and learn to navigate the complex landscape of players.

A significant scene in this phase of the story is an unexpected meeting between Haymitch and President Snow; during the parade where the Tributes are presented to the Capitol, Haymitch’s chariot crashes and his fellow Tribute Louella dies. Haymitch makes a scene by carrying her dead body directly to Snow. Later when Snow meets Haymitch in private, he threatens him and also finds out about his girlfriend back in 12. Being on Snow’s personal radar is not a safe place, so now Haymitch has a target on his back.

He’s not without allies, though; long before Katniss Everdeen ever entered the arena, a loose cabal of rebels was already at work behind the scenes, trying to sabotage the Games however they could. After learning this, Haymitch becomes part of a conspiracy to destroy the arena before the Games can end, taking away the Capitol’s most potent psychological weapon against the Districts.

He’s only moderately successful, and failing here is even more dangerous for him. He more or less wins the way that Katniss and Peeta saw in the footage later, but the reader learns that this footage was manipulated; nobody in Panem saw anything that he did to sabotage the arena. He’s declared the victor, only to return home and find his house in flames with his mom and brother trapped inside. As a final dagger to the heart, he meets up with his girlfriend just as she ingests poison, thinking it was candy, and she dies in his arms.

Haymitch’s losses are greater than he can bear, and from there he becomes the alcoholic that we know from the trilogy. His challenge was amplified by the fact that his birthday is always on Reaping Day, and in the drunken haze that becomes his baseline, he always hears his little brother say “Happy birthday, Haymitch!” whenever Reaping Day comes around. For twenty-four years he watched more and more kids enter the arena, only to die, until Katniss and Peeta came along for the 74th.

Characters

Haymitch is a fantastic main character. A rascal. A survivor, up to a point. A young man fueled by passion to his love, to his family, and loyalty to his friends. Watching him break in slow motion is a painful process, but in a story where you already know the ending, learning the other steps can be illuminating. In a lot of ways he’s like Katniss; he wasn’t actually Reaped, but by bringing him in, the Games introduced an instrument of their own downfall. Without him, Katniss wouldn’t have been as effective. He’s a crucial part of that puzzle and seeing how he became who he was is a rewarding process.

His brother Sid could easily have been a clone of Prim, but he stands on his own two feet. Like Katniss, Haymitch lost his dad to the mines, and his mom makes her living as a laundress. We get regular references to his deceased grandmother, named in the Appalachian fashion as “Mamaw.” Not gonna lie, this tied me to Haymitch even more, as my family is from coal country and my dad’s mom was my Mamaw.

Another key character is Haymitch’s girlfriend Lenore Dove. She’s from the same subset of people as Lucy Gray Baird, the female lead of BOSS. The “Covey” were a group of traveling minstrels who eventually settled in 12, and had their own customs. Lucy Gray was once the object of Coriolanus Snow’s affections, and she escaped once she knew he was a murderer. The fact that he never caught her “ghost” is one of Snow’s most challenging secrets; when Snow finds out that Haymitch has a Covey girlfriend, it stirs up more than just a practical piece of animosity. Snow rapidly becomes invested in Haymitch’s downfall and Lenore Dove becomes a piece in his strategy.

We also meet several familiar faces before they grow into their more solidified versions from later on. Beatty and Wiress have a role to play; they’re both victors, though Beatty is a known subversive, and as punishment for hacking the Capitol’s TV systems, they reaped his son for the Quarter Quell. Wiress is coming off a victory in the 49th Games; she is assigned to mentor District 12, as they haven’t had a victor since Lucy Gray, and nobody is allowed to talk about her.

The other stand-in mentor for 12 is Mags, from District 4. Her warmth and compassion are helpful to Haymitch as he mourns the death of Louella, and it’s great to see her at full capacity before she loses her speech like she did in CF.

Then there’s Plutarch Heavensbee, who became Head Gamemaker in CF. Here he’s just a lower-level employee in the Games, but he’s affiliated with the rebellion, and he’s able to help Haymitch and Beatty coordinate their efforts to sabotage the arena. He has a crucial conversation with Haymitch during his Victory Tour, one which clarifies Haymitch’s ties to the rebels later on, and why he was able to trust Plutarch.

One of my favorite appearances, which elicited an actual verbal outburst from me in the truck, was when Effie Trinket entered the story. It’s established in THG that stylists almost never care about District 12, and never put any effort into making their Tributes look good. We see that first hand with 12’s handlers, Druscilla Sickle and Magno Stift. However, when the Tributes need to look smart for their interviews with Caesar Flickermann, someone calls an audible to their clutch cousin, who happens to be Effie. She’s able to wring pearls from coal and makes the Tributes look great in a way that felt authentic to the character.

And finally, for the most devoted fans of the overall series, getting to meet Katniss’ parents—and learn their names—was an especial treat. Burdock Everdeen is a hunter from the Seam, and Asterid March works in the apothecary in town. They’re sweet on each other, and while we never meet the Mellark boy who likes Asterid, we do meet his father, Otho Mellark, who runs the bakery. Greasy Say also has a few cameos at the Hob.

All of these appearances felt right for the story, and not just egregious. I appreciated that, it’s the right way to offer up “fan service” to the devoted reader.

Politics

Collins has been consistent in her standard with these books, namely that they’re about power, tyranny, rights, and peace, without putting cheap and dated stand-ins for any current-day politician. However, there is a point I wanted to note from the two prequels, both of which came out during the culture wars of the 2020s.

None of the content in the trilogy every touched on issues of race or sexuality, which is great—going into those regions would have watered down the real focus and merit of the books. In the ten years between BOSS and MOCKINGJAY (MJ), mainstream publishers took on a more proactive role in propagandizing these issues, demanding they be crowbarred into every story possible. In BOSS there was brief mention of a man who owned a music club in the Capitol, and he was romantically linked to a male musician who performed there. It was only once, a fleeting thing, and the subject never came up again.

Something similar happened in SOTR, early in the first chapter, where Haymitch mentioned two men in a relationship in 12, who had to keep it on the down-low. There was an awkward line from Haymitch (this book is first-person, like the trilogy) that didn’t match his tone or voice at all, about how he supports people who “love differently.”

Both of these were awkward inserts that had no bearing on anything else in the story, and were never mentioned again. For a series that makes regular use of setups and payoffs, the random injection of a zero-impact gay character felt more like a demand from the editor and less like something the actual creative intended for her book.

With all of the exposure in the last few months from the Department of Government Efficiency, it wouldn’t surprise me to know that mainstream publishers were getting federal funds for DEI initiatives, and thus required the insertion of these elements into everything they put it. This explanation is much more fitting, especially considering the “here-and-gone” nature of these mentions.

Content

The violence in the arena is on par with anything else that has been presented in this series; bladed weapons, blunt instruments, poison, blood, and so on. There was, however, one particular death that I found more than a little upsetting. (I think it was meant to be so, obviously.) There’s a decapitation near the end of the Games, and you can understand how it adds to Haymitch’s lifelong distress at the center of this narrative.

What does it add?

This is the big question, and I’ll admit when I was at the 2/3rds mark, I was asking myself this question. Why write this book? What does it say that hasn’t already been said by BOSS or the trilogy? We know what the Games are, why they are wicked, and that totalitarianism is bad.

However, Haymitch has a few observations that didn’t make it into the other volumes, a key one being that he doesn’t understand what the Games are supposed to accomplish if they’re meant to punish the Districts for rebelling. The rebellion ended fifty years ago. None of the kids—or their parents—were even alive for it. Does it work as intended? Or is the fact that there’s still a rebellion prove that this whole thing is pointless?

Even more so, this is a story about how the truth is manipulated to fit a narrative, and that was never more clear than when Haymitch saw the official footage of his Games after the fact. Entire sequences were shown out of order, Tributes died at the wrong time, and there was never any mention of his failed attempt to blow up the key infrastructure of the arena (even though he had the means and carried out that part of his mission.)

Finally, SOTR is a story about endurance, persistence, and patience in the fight against tyranny. Haymitch failed and wanted to give up, but Plutarch pulled him aside to talk about it. (He takes him to the attic of the Justice Building in District 11, where Haymitch would later take Katniss and Peeta in CF, as there is no surveillance there.)

When Haymitch chided Plutarch for thinking he was heroic and that the Capitol could be beaten, Haymitch admitted in plain terms “I’m nobody’s idea of a hero. But at least I’m still in the game.”

It would be 25 years before they succeeded in helping Katniss and Peeta destroy the arena, upending the games as they had intended during Haymitch’s Quell.

Persistence. It’s the devil’s only virtue. If you want to beat him, you’ve got to match it.

Fan Service

This is a question that comes up every time a late sequel arrives in a franchise, and I think it’s fair to ask. We live in an age of saturated IPs and cash grabs, most of which only dilute the legacy of greater artistic creations.

On the plus side, this was composed by the original author, and in the spirit of the same philosophical exploration that led to the trilogy. The reader treads familiar ground in District 12, the Capitol, the Training Center, the Arena, and the Victory Tour, but all of this in service of the higher questions of good versus evil, and persistence in the fight.

Why read it?

I will say that I had the same third-act hesitancy with SOTR that I had with BOSS, wondering where she was taking me and how it was going to end. The conclusion of BOSS gave us a look at the birth of a tyrant, a man who had the choice between love and power and chose power, while setting off to kill his way to the top.

BOSS did leave a few too many pieces of that puzzle to the imagination, linking eighteen year-old Snow with his elder version, but seeing him in his late 50s in SOTR gave us some closure that I didn’t know I was looking for. While SOTR is the first book about a subject where we already know the ending, it’s a bridge novel that makes the entire series more complete, and more robust for existing.

The epilogue was a particular treat, fast-forwarding Haymitch into his twenties, thirties, and forties, watching as Burdock brought his daughter around to the Hob, then mentoring her in the 74th and 75th Games. When the war was finally over, he helped Katniss and Peeta with their book of remembrance, and he was finally able to recall the names of people he had loved and lost, going all the way back to his stint in the Games.

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