The narrative voice in The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, did not do justice to the story. With that said, it is still a very good one. “In the woods waits the only person with whom I can be myself. Gale. [He] says I never smile except in the woods,” (page 6). So says Katniss, a sixteen year-old girl who risks her life by volunteering for the Hunger Games, a televised event where twenty-four teenagers get together and kill each other. It was designed by the Capitol to keep the surrounding twelve districts in their place after the dozen united in a civil war against the Capitol. Katniss, who never really liked people, is ill at ease being thrust onto cameras and into the nation’s eye.

The problem is that Katniss tends to repeat herself. As the narrator, she brings up several points in the story multiple times, including her innate hatred of attention. However, because she makes clear this feeling many times in the book, I got the opposite idea. If she doesn’t like attention, then why does she so frequently talk about it? This is, however, easy to get past, and after that it is a compelling, fast-paced adventure that I didn’t want to put down and was excited to pick up again.

So even though you won’t find many subtle metaphors and the first-person narrator is odd at times, action is the primary part of this story and the more iffy aspects don’t add up to much in comparison. This is why I gave The Hunger Games nine points out of ten.