The 51st book I read this year was Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, book 0.5 in the Hunger Game Series. We’re finally getting the story of Haymitch’s games and believe me when I say that I walked into this READY to be traumatised by this author again.
I re-read the original trilogy the other year, so if you need a refresh you can find that review here.
And my review of A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes here
This summary/ review is spoiler free for both pre-quell books but potentially not the original trilogy.
An attempt at summarising the plot
This book is set during the second quarter quell, which is also the 50th anniversary of The Games (if you remember Katniss goes to the 75th quarter quell in book 2 of the original trilogy). Haymitch, like Katniss, doesn’t have the spark of fire for rebellion, he just wants to keep his mum and brother safe, and spend time with his girl. It’s because of this that everything goes wrong at the Reaping, when the boy who was Reaped runs and is gunned down and Haymitch’s fiery girlfriend, a Covey girl named Lenore Dove, tries to comfort the boy’s screaming mother. When a peacekeeper tries to move them both along and goes to strike Lenore, Haymitch intervenes, as punishment he selected in the dead boys’ place.
This Games is different, every district has to give two boys and two girls. So Haymitch decides from the get-go that he’s pretty much a goner and his only priority is to die in the least horrific way possible to spare his family from seeing it. However, events quickly occur that spur him into an action that is tantamount to rebellion (trying to be vague). With a target already on his back and growing anger at the capitol and President Snow, Haymitch knows he’s not going to be allowed to live past his Games, which an underground group of rebels decide to use to their advantage. He is convinced to get involved with a plot to undermine the Games and The Capitol and he figures, as long as he dies, the consequences won’t fall onto his family or his girlfriend, so Haymitch agrees to take part.
This plot does not go as planned, and, as we know from the original trilogy, Haymitch survives to suffer the consequences of his actions but for something that goes so much deeper than what we thought.
My review
The thing is, we know it ends badly for Haymitch because we meet him 24 years later, alone and a drunk. Even as you are reading, you know what the terrible ending is going to be. But despite all of that, somehow I was stilling crying behind my sunglasses while reading this poolside on my recent holiday.
This was not a vanity publication of an author trying to get more money from the franchise, this felt like a backstory she had already made up when she wrote the Hunger Games, just as the other prequel did. And just like the other prequel and the intention behind the original series, this book felt very politically relevant, especially with current events in the US.
We meet characters that are still around in Katniss’s games, we learn a little more about their backstory and how long Haymitch and the others have been waiting for the right spark for the rebellion. They thought Haymitch was it, but, as he says in his narration, they were 25 years too early.
I don’t think I can express to you the grief I felt for all of these characters but especially Haymitch. He doesn’t really get a happy ending, even after the events of the original trilogy, he becomes content with his life as part of Katniss and Peter’s family but he never moves on from Lenore. It was also the grief of his schoolmate’s who are the parents of Katniss’s generation, and the ties he had to all of them that he deliberately cut to keep people safe from Snow’s retribution. He was friends with Katniss’s dad, knew her mum, went into the games with the twin of the mum whose daughter gives Katniss her mockingjay pin.
There are songs from the other prequel book woven into this book too, songs that are woven into Katniss’s series too; the legacy of the Covey people and Lucy Grey used against him in a rebellion 65 years later, making it all the more satisfying the more you know the backstory of the songs that help bring Snow down.
I hope I am conveying how clever I find this author, and how these details aren’t like you-know-who and a certain wizarding series where ‘new’ facts are created and conveniently shoe-horned into plot holes and information gaps from the original series.
It really has thrown me back into the world of these books and how much I enjoyed the series and the movies. Plus, picturing Woody Haroldson’s voice as I read Haymitch’s story honestly added a lot to the characterisation.
In short, if you are a fan of this series, you will love this book. If you are completely new to the franchise, I think you could start on this book and be able to understand what is going on but I do think you need to do the journey of the original trilogy, then A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, then this book, to truly truly feel the absolute trauma that the fans who read it back in the day felt.
Antonia Bernardin 