A Review - Sunrise on the Reaping - A.K.A…
- madgirlthoughts
- 2 hours ago
- 6 min read
HOW SUZANNE COLLINS RIPPED MY HEART OUT AND STOMPED ON IT TO THE POINT I ALMOST CALLED MY PARENTS WHO WERE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ATLANTIC
The annual Hunger Games are about to begin, and this year is the Second Quarter Quell. Every twenty-five years, the Capitol bring you the games you know and love with a unique and exciting twist, chosen at random by our illustrious president.
Over the last forty-nine years, we’ve seen the arenas evolve, the introduction of sponsorship, and the fantastic growth of our technology and Muttations, making this beloved annual tradition a true spectacle to behold.
Every year so far, we’ve seen twenty-four courageous young men and women (between the ages of 12 and 18) enter this pageant to bring honour to their district and remind us all of how far we’ve come since the Dark Days.
Forty-nine years of this tradition have brought us danger, drama, and 1,127 dead children, all captured on live television.
Fifty is a special number.
And these games promise to be very special indeed.
So, I stopped attending therapy voluntarily over 4 years ago.
Since reading "Sunrise on the Reaping," I’ve had to acknowledge that I may need to reignite my treatment, and Ms. Collins WILL be legally and morally responsible for footing the (proverbial) bill.
To summarise the emotional hell this fuckin’ thing wrought on my inner peace, this was my face after I closed the final page.
And I almost video-called my parents, WHO WERE IN NEW YORK, to tell them how much the mean author lady hurt my feelings with her bad, bad book.
Obviously, when I say ‘bad’ I mean literary masterpiece - I’m just still nursing the dropkick to my soul that those 400 pages delivered (with a karate chop of emotional malice that Collins, I’m pretty sure, included just for fun).
So, this is the second Hunger Games prequel. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was the first, and I warned y’all when I reviewed that one that no👏bod👏y was ready for how this series was about to become my whole personality AGAIN.
This time around, we get to see the story of everyone’s favourite District 12 alcoholic, Haymitch Abernathy. Due to the increased stakes of it being the 50th anniversary of the Hunger Games, plus a whole host of bad fuckin’ luck, Haymitch ends up being forced into the Hunger Games the day he turns sixteen.
Yeah. That’s right. Haymitch’s birthday is the day of the Reaping. Every. Year. For twenty-five years after his own trauma, Haymitch would be sent two kids that he knew he couldn’t save, as a fucked up birthday present, and then would watch them and twenty-one other kiddos die awful deaths.
.
.
.
Yeah.
I’d probably start drinking too.
To anyone who knows, at minimum, the original trilogy, what I say next won’t be a spoiler, but if you’ve never touched a Hunger Games book before in your life?
Why are you here? Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the traffic and views, but for real, you’ve only got yourself to blame for spoilers at this point.
Scroll down till after the photo of the goose if, for some reason, you’re still trying to fool yourself into thinking you’re too good for a sneaky lil preview.
We cool?
We cool👍
Anyways, anyone who’s got prior HG reading or viewing experience goes into this book knowing that Haymitch is going to walk out of the arena alive, District 12’s second-ever victor in fifty years.
“Oh, but the main character lives and you already know how many other kids die and even the way that they do! iT CAnT Be THaT saD!”
(This is not the image to mark the end of spoilers. Learn to read instructions and keep scrolling fuckers!😉)
Oh my sweet summer child…
It’s BECAUSE we went into this thinking we knew what was coming, that some of us (allegedly) cried for three hours and didn’t sleep for two days.
The greatest trick and most vicious lie a person can pull on you is that knowing the ending takes some of the sting out of the shock and sadness.
Let’s look at the basic facts that, as far as I am concerned, anyone who has read the original trilogy should be aware of.
The Hunger Games is a fight to the death between CHILDREN - just in case you forgot.
This specific Hunger Games, the 50th Anniversary, has been given an extra ‘fun’ twist to keep the audience engaged. Instead of twenty-three dead children and one victor, there will be forty-seven dead children and one ‘winner.’
(and I use ‘winner’ in both the loosest and sickest sense of the word)
Thanks to Catching Fire (book 2), we’ve already been semi-introduced to one of the other District 12 tributes, Maysilee Donner. We see her and Haymitch’s alliance, and we see how she dies.
Those three points alone should be enough to convey how deeply sad and incredibly fucked up Suzanne Collins’ whole work-of-art universe is. And we know all this before we open the first page of Sunrise on the Reaping. So, although it is still sad, it is not a surprise.
Here’s just a couple of things we DON’T know before opening Sunrise on the Reaping. And, bear in mind that I am actively trying not to reveal the starkest details - spoilers they might appear to be, but until you let this book punch you in the throat personally?
You won’t know, man. You ain’t been there, yet.
I know I’ve already told you this but THE DAY KIDS GET CHOSEN TO DIE IS HAYMITCH’S BIRTHDAY. SUZANNE COLLINS, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?
Haymitch has a mother and a little brother. He has neither when we meet him in Katniss Everdeen’s story.Sunrise on the Reaping will tell you why.
Peeta Mellark was not the first person that the Capitol Hijacked.
You remember the super smart man from District 3 who helps the rebellion in Katniss’ time? Beetee and his brains, who help Katniss blow up the 75th arena? He has a son.
Mags, the elderly woman who practically raised Finnick Odair, and volunteered to go into the 75th games to save the love of his life? She wasn’t always mute. And Wiress, Beetee’s District partner in the 75th games? She wasn’t always ‘nuts.’
Squirrels. Fuckin’ squirrels.
I HATED this book.
By which I mean, it is one of the best books I’ve ever read, but saying I ‘enjoyed’ it or admitting that I ‘love’ it, feels fucked up and wrong even by my standards.
On a technical level, you’ll never read a better example of the power of propaganda, state-sanctioned/imposed oppression and violence, or the illusions of choice and control.
Looking at it as an author, I once again am blown away by Collins’ incredible talent for weaving new themes and components into the world of the Hunger Games without sacrificing the qualities that first captivated fans. She can take the seemingly most minor details from previous storylines and turn them into emotional frickin’ hand grenades. She is now, and will remain forever, one of the best at holding up the dystopian mirror to our own world, raising questions that often feel disturbingly pertinent for her readers.
(*Sigh* - one day, one day, I’ll get to read and review a book that isn’t unsettlingly relevant to our own world.) Wait, who said that?
As a fan, a reader, and (allegedly) a human being? This book broke my heart in ways I wasn’t prepared for and made me feel legitimately sick every forty pages or so.
This, of course, means EVERYONE should read it.*
(* I am not legally, morally, or ethically responsible if you choose to read this book and it fucks you up - just coz I think everyone should read it, doesn’t mean they should. If I told you to jump off a cliff, would you?)
César A. Cruz, a Mexican poet and activist, once said:
All of the Hunger Games books are the embodiment of Cruz’s above sentiment.
I love this book like all-fire, and can’t wait to see it brought to life onscreen. The casting crew so far deserve all the money and all the awards for the castings they’ve released so far.The filming for Sunrise’s movie adaptation is already well underway, and it is expected to be released in November next year.
November 20th, 2026, to be exact (Oh come on, as if I haven’t had that date circled for nine months already?)
444 days from when I plan to post this.
4 + 4 + 4 = 12.
District 12. Coincidence? I THINK NOT SIR.
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