The Hunger Games

A book series written by Suzanne Collins. It completely rips off of "Battle Royale", a book by Japanese author Koushun Takami that was written over a decade before The Hunger Games. There were also two film adaptations of Battle Royale and a spin-off manga. Both books involve teenagers being forced to kill each other by the government. The Hunger Games is very poorly written. Its biggest mistake is that it is written in 1st person, so one knows exactly how it ends the second one starts to read it. Suzanne Collins avoids showing the violence that takes place in her novel, usually implying deaths rather than showing them. This is because her target audience is teenage girls. The protagonist, Katniss, is very unintelligent and has the same problem as all other female protagonists in modern teen fiction- she is in love with two guys and the main focus of the book is which one she chooses. This is the most important thing in the book- it doesn't matter that people are trying to kill Katniss, or that she lives in a world ruled by an oppressive government, or that her family is poor or that a rebellion is being started- the only thing important to her is choosing between these two guys. Everything else takes the back seat. Essentially, The Hunger Games fails in every area that Battle Royal succeeds.