When You've Been Set Up To Lose Everything You Love, What Is There Left To Fight For

I recently finished reading Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins. This is book #0.5 in the Hunger Games series.

**POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT**

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena."

The main theme for this book seems to be that revolution is not something that happens overnight. It requires generations and years of sacrifices and failed plans and determination to make sure that the sun does not rise on another day living under the oppressive regime of Empire. Given the state of the world today and how shit everything seems like, this was a nice reminder to not give up and to keep doing your small part to fanning the spark, because maybe not this time, not in our life, but eventually everything will align perfectly enough to break the machine. And that is exactly what this book does. The only thing is, like with most prequels, this one was a tragedy since we knew going in there could not be a happy ending, and everyone here knows how much I love a well-written tragedy. I held it pretty well throughout the book, but the last chapter and the epilogue Broke Me.

I am not sure how I would rate this in comparison with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. They are both better written than the original trilogy, shows how much Collins has improved as a writer. Maybe it also has to do with how the books seem to have matured with the readers. The newer books are a lot darker than the trilogy (at least for me). I felt like Sunrise on the Reaping was a lot more gruesome with more gore in comparison to the previous Hunger Games books. Reading these books makes me wonder how I stomached the trilogy, maybe it was how they were marketed? With the romance angle? Or maybe when I first read them, I was too young to grasp the depth of them? Whatever it was, Collins seems not to pull any punches and shows the full extent of the cruelty and dehumanization from the Capitol. It used to shock me how something like this could ever be possible; surely it's just an exaggerated dystopia, but with the live-streamed genocide in Gaza, this book seems very timely. Suzanne Collins has always said that she only writes books when she has something to say, and it is very hard to ignore what she is trying to say here so explicitly.

Another thing that was interesting here was how different young Haymitch is compared to the trilogy. With the Snow book, the character seemed pretty much like how we perceived him in the trilogy, except more pathetic. The dynamics of the characters and how they parallel the trilogy characters are also super interesting.

Ballad showed how Snow and Gaul, and the Capitol started the propaganda machine by making the Games so marketable while making sure the tributes are not humanized. The power of propaganda is clearer in this book. The way the Capitol controls the narrative to make sure they come on top, so the masses believe there is no way and no point to disobey. When they censor the smallest rebellion, it is easy to believe that the empire is always going to win.

I love prequels so much, I don't care what people say about prequels being a money grab because you know the ending already. For me, they add so much context and enrich the narrative. In a way, they change how you perceive the sequels as well because now the reader has so much more backstory and explanation on what made a character that way. If Collins keeps writing more prequels, I will keep reading them. Finnick, Johanna, the Dark Days, I trust her to deliver poignant social commentary with great character development.

Check out Sunrise of the Reaping, and discover what happens when everything you love is taken from you.

Happy Reading :)