Warning: This review contains spoilers for “Sunrise on the Reaping” and other “The Hunger Games” novels.
“Sunrise on the Reaping,” released March 18, sold over 1.5 million copies in its first week. But despite the sales boom, Suzanne Collins’s latest prequel centers on Haymitch Abernathy, a side-character beloved in “The Hunger Games” universe for his wit, charisma and tragic backstory – a backstory the prequel retells inelegantly and repetitively. While a successful dystopian prequel can enhance a series by incorporating new plot details, maintaining the writing quality of the author’s previous work, avoiding excessive fan-service and finding fresh ways to explore the series’s themes, “Sunrise on the Reaping” fails to add anything of value to Collins’ elaborately crafted world of Panem. The novel’s abundant sales exemplify how writing quality ceases to matter when a series becomes popular enough.
Collins’ original trilogy tells the story of Katniss Everdeen, a teenage tribute from a District subjugated by an oppressive Capitol that forces her to participate in a televised fight to the death against other children, called the Hunger Games. Haymitch Abernathy, a drunk, sarcastic former Hunger Games victor charged with guiding Katniss through preparation for the Games, has emerged as one of the series’s fan-favorite characters.
“Sunrise on The Reaping” follows Haymitch during his own adolescence after he becomes a tribute in the Hunger Games. Resourceful and protective, he only hopes to help his fellow tributes from District 12, not return home in victory. But he’s soon swept up in a resistance plot that aims to physically destroy the Hunger Games arena.
After exploring the force-field around the arena, hoping to exploit it as an act of resistance against the Capitol, Haymitch ends up winning the Games when the last remaining competitor attacks him with an axe that accidentally ricochets off the force-field, killing the competitor and rendering him the victor. However, he pays a steep price for his rebellious activity. Upon Haymitch’s victory, the tyrannical Capitol’s President Snow murders all of Haymitch’s family and loved ones, leaving him to descend into alcoholism until Katniss Everdeen arrives and the events of the main trilogy begin.
The story might have fascinated readers, had Collins not already told it – she previously revealed all of these details about Haymitch’s history in the second and third books of the original “The Hunger Games” trilogy. The plot’s premature disclosure might not have made for an intolerable read if executed with fluidity and originality. However, “Sunrise on the Reaping” lacks precision and freshness.
Haymitch’s signature irreverence, which in the original “Hunger Games” has a magnetic indelicacy, often slides into informality. Collins tries to make him sound like a prototypical teenage boy with modern slang that feels out of place, pulling the reader out of the setting. In contrast to this almost juvenile quality of Haymitch’s inner monologue, Collins intersperses the second half of the novel with long passages from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” The frequent interruptions of poetry, while at first haunting, eventually make the novel’s final chapters tedious.
Similarly overdone, the novel’s fan-service becomes convoluted and unrealistic as Collins excessively links the series’s various characters familially or romantically. While one can understand the impulse to tap into the nostalgia and tie beloved characters together, such cross-over relationships feel unnatural when taken too far, perhaps indicating Collins cannot move past the stories of her old characters.
Unlike in her other prequel, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” Collins does not add new elements to “Sunrise on the Reaping.” She reuses the same tropes of her previous books: the strong protagonist taking the younger, innocent tribute under his wing, only for the child to die, the plucky, unlikely Hunger Games victor devoted to his family and the daring resistance plan doomed to end in tragedy.
However, while the novel’s themes of totalitarianism, the horror of violence toward children and class struggle have no new insights compared to the other “The Hunger Games” books, “Sunrise on the Reaping” nevertheless provides discerning political commentary. The book succeeds relatively as a standalone dystopian novel that reflects the ills of modern society in an accessible format. Unfortunately, the vast majority of its readers have read the previous “The Hunger Games” novels and know Collins can do better. As a prequel to one of the greatest young adult series of the 21st century, “Sunrise on the Reaping” flounders.
