After my wife raving about it , and with the movie coming up next month , I finally got to it
Does the reader satisfied  with the story?
I might just be the last person on the planet to read The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins' 2008 post-apocalyptic YA dystopian science fiction novel. After my wife raving about it, and with the movie coming up next month, I finally got to it, and I loved it. So if I was not, in fact, the last person to start this series and you haven't checked it out yet, read on to find out why you ought to read it as well.Katniss Everdeen is a 16 year old girl in District 12, a coal-mining town in the country of Panem. She supports her family after her father died in mining accident several years before the events of the novel by illegally hunting in the nearby forests. Each year, as punishment for an uprising long ago, the Capitol randomly selects a one boy and one girl aged 12 to 18 from each of the twelve districts to participate in the Hunger Games, an arena death match where only one contestant can survive. When her 12 year old sister Prim is selected, Katniss volunteers to take her place.Collins artfully crafts an exciting story that fires on all cylinders. Action? I mentioned "post-apocalyptic arena death match," right? Romance? More than covered. Compelling protagonist? Katniss is fantastic. She's strong, tough, determined, loyal, but she still has many of the normal concerns of a teenager, and flaws that make her believable. Interesting setting? Very much so. I devoured every bit about the world and wondered about what it implied for the larger setting, eager to find out more about what this unfortunate world is like and how it came to be.I've read several other dystopian novels - 1984, Brave New World, Cloud Atlas - and The Hunger Games fits right there alongside them, despite it's YA target audience and teen protagonist. I was amazed at how grim Collins could get and still manage to keep things YA. It actually reminded me some of the works of Robert Louis Stevenson such as Treasure Island, which can be challenging and have complex characters and violence, but still be appropriate for the younger reader. We seem to be living in a golden age of YA fiction that adults can enjoy, with Collins, J.K. Rowling, Scott Westerfeld and others crossing over to adult audiences with their excellent YA novels.I listened to the audio version, read by Carolyn McCormick. McCormick does an excellent job narrating the novel. She manages to convey the tension well, and her different accents and male voices are strong.As I said, I'm probably the last person to read The Hunger Games. But if not, if someone out there reads this review and hasn't read The Hunger Games yet, do so now. It's a great book, and I can't wait to keep reading and find out what happens in the rest of the trilogy. 