On March 18th, 2025 Suzanne Collins released something into the world that came to incite mass psychosis, with effects lasting to this day: Sunrise on the Reaping, the second prequel novel to The Hunger Games trilogy.
What this addition to the trilogy brings is the in-depth backstory of Haymitch Abernathy, the mentor of Katniss Everdeen and a formative member of the resistance against the Capitol. It details the 50th annual Hunger Games as well as how we got the Haymitch we have become fond of throughout the main storyline. In theory, this sounds like an amazing addition to the well-loved series– so many characters that we know cross paths, we learn the beginning of many stories we’d already known the end of, and we get a peek into the history of the districts. But let me save you the trouble of reading all 400 pages of this novel; it was absolutely terrible. And I’m pissed.
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Though the first few pages of the book were nice and appealed to my sense of nostalgia, by the time I got to page 50, I already knew this book had lost me. Firstly, there were characters, plot points, and relationships that were not even in the original series, let alone alluded to. Beetee had a son who got reaped, and we are now hearing about this? You mean to tell me Haymitch used to be best friends with Katniss’s father, but Katniss never knew that? After years of them working together in the original books, Collins didn’t think it would be nice to throw that in there?
Secondly, the storytelling fell very flat. There was no room for the reader to make interpretations about certain decisions or to theorize about potential thought processes the characters would have—Collins would just outright say everything. This honestly wouldn’t be as big of an offence if she hadn’t shown within both the original series and the other prequel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, that she has the ability to craft a captivating story without telling the readers exactly what to think. (A counterargument that I have heard to this take is that she is writing this way to match her audience’s reading level because of the ongoing literacy crisis…. This is the equivalent of telling someone who is shit at math that learning their 4 times tables will help them improve… let’s all start being serious, I beg.)
Lastly, genuinely the most disheartening part of this whole book is that, as a direct result of my previous statements, it reads like a movie script. The scenes where Collins writes her best are in the description of the locations, especially the area in which they spend the majority of the story. However, every other aspect of the book felt so flat and surface-level that there was only one possible explanation for that– Collins wrote this way to make filming easier for the directors of the already-announced movie adaptation.
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This book is indicative of a larger trend that has been growing slowly but surely within our media industries. Very shitty books are being published just for the sake of garnering an audience for the actual main event, which is not even the book but the movie that will come out in the heat of its popularity. This has happened with People We Meet on Vacation, Verity (Colleen Hoover… I don’t even want to go open that can of worms), and Project Hail Mary, just to name a few.
This harmful merging of the book and movie industry is starting to get a little too close for my liking, and it seems like only the book industry is getting the short end of the stick. If the original material quality of books continues to decrease, yet movie adaptation quality goes up, why would people even entertain the book? When the publishing industry becomes a gateway to being a screenwriter instead of, well, a publisher, what does that say for the future of the industry?
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With all that said, I feel like I have been going crazy ever since Sunrise on the Reaping’s release–I was the only one who wasn’t really standing strong behind it. Every other review I saw was filled with praise and applause, while I was thinking that giving it 4 stars would be too generous of a review.
I think what has truly fueled my train of disappointment is the fact that Collins set such a high standard with A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It was everything; the writing was amazing, the themes were so thought-provoking, and she managed to bring a complex outlook to Snow, the main antagonist in the series, who was previously seen as pure evil. Granted, Snow is still very much evil and twisted, but Collins painted such a beautiful storyline about how the corruption of his soul began in the first place. She managed to shape the view of the most hated character in the whole series through just a few hundred pages– but what did Sunrise on the Reaping do to further Haymitch’s character? There’s a fine line between putting characters in difficult situations for the sake of character development, and putting them in difficult situations just to pull on heartstrings…I fear this story falls on the latter side.
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I have said my piece. You guys don’t know how long I held that in me… it was difficult. Thank you, Loco Mag, for being a safe space. With that said, my ticket is booked to see the movie on opening night, and I will be there with my pen and paper taking notes. #EthicalHater
