The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, is the story of a future dystopia on the land in which the United States used to be, and the people who have to deal with these troubles.  The main character, Katniss Everdeen, is a 16 year old from the 12th district out of 12, which is also the poorest district.  Katniss, the main care-taker of her family after her father's death, seems at first to be very un-empathetic to her family and friends.  When the 12th district holds their annual selection for the capitol city's "hunger games", an event where a boy and girl from each of the 12 districts, are forced to fight to the death to prevent rebellion to the capitol city, Katniss and a boy named Peeta Mellark are chosen. The two go to the capitol city, the laughing stock of all the districts, to get trained by the sole living winner of the games from the 12th district, Haymitch, an old, beaten down drunk.  Haymitch sees they have some natural talent from years from having to hunt in the woods for food to survive in their starving district.  The two get trained and enter the games.  The battle and outcome are exciting and surprising.

The most interesting theme I pulled from The Hunger Games was the realization of the importance of family by the main character, Katniss Everdeen. This literary element of characterization was very compelling.  Katniss started off the book annoyed at her family for having to do all the physical labor to keep them alive.  She did not take into consideration what her family had done for her.  Her mother always made the family look presentable so they were never taken away by the capitol city to an orphanage, and her sister was always upbeat and positive that kept the daunting task of gathering food possible, subconsciously know she was doing what her deceased father always did for people she loved.  By the end of the book, Katniss really came to see how she under appreciated her family and how they were the most important thing to her.  This character development was by far the most compelling theme of the book.

What do they call The Hunger Games in France? http://i.imgur.com/CGzOW.jpg.  Okay now that I got that out of the way I can get to the review.  Well... that is going to be a prominent theme of this review portion.  Battle Royale is a 1999 novel by Koushun Takami.  It is about a world in which Japan won WWII, and had formed a futuristic dystopia.  In this dystopia, a group of high school students, randomly selected by the government every year, are forced to fight to the death to prevent rebellion against the government (sound familiar?).  Battle Royale does this story infinitely better than The Hunger Games.  This is because it is much longer, so it gets into more detail, and the kids have known each other for years so it shows the way some are apprehensive and some turn psychotic.  The Hunger Games is just a more poorly retold version of Battle Royale.  However, the thing I did enjoy more about The Hunger Games was it had a very relatable main character.  I would not recommend The Hunger Games to anyone, unless for some reason they wanted to read a worse version of Battle Royale, or like to read books before seeing the movie (my reason for reading it).  My overall opinion: It was a good book, but the story has been done before in a much better way.