Sunrise on the Reaping
Book of the Week: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
Reviewed by our resident Hunger Games lover, Franca 💜
“I have been tasked with the impossibility of summing up my (spoiler free) thoughts on Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins in one short Instagram post. Where to begin?
Possibly at the beginning. Sunrise on the Reaping follows a 16 year old Haymitch Abernathy who has been chosen to fight to the death in the 50th Hunger Games. Normally, 24 tributes are selected, a boy and a girl from each of Panem’s 12 districts, but this year it’s a Quarter Quell and there are twice as many tributes. The odds are definitely not in Haymitch’s favour. His one objective? Get home to his mother, his brother, and his girl. This soon proves more difficult than he had anticipated. Haymitch isn’t one to sit still and be told what to do and his defiance of the Capitol quickly gets him in trouble with Panem’s most powerful man, President Coriolanus Snow. I shall not reveal what happens next, you must read for yourself.
As someone whose favourite Hunger Games character has always been Haymitch Abernathy (and Effie Trinket, of course) I was scared to say the least. Would this book be able to live up to my expectations? Would Suzanne Collins be able to do my favourite tortured soul justice? The answer to both those questions is YES.
Collins does not provide us with a whole lot of information about Haymitch’s past in the original trilogy. We learn very little about his family and how he won the games. What we know for certain is that he has never been able to recover from the horrors he witnessed, drowning his sorrows in white liquor and sleeping with a knife under his pillow. But how did he get there?
My friend Persephone and I have spent many late nights speculating about Haymitch’s past. (I can hear you calling us nerds through the screen, don’t think I can’t.) Did his father die in a mining accident, or did he abandon his wife? What happened to his family? His girl? Were they sent away, burned, tortured? Who was this mysterious girl Haymitch loved all those years ago?
Sunrise on the Reaping answers all the questions fans of Haymitch Abernathy have been dying to know. And then some.
The book touches on themes such as the abuse of power, the sacrifices needed to change a system, the importance of music and most importantly propaganda. We learn things about Haymitch we, the reader, didn’t know because Katniss didn’t know them either. When we encounter him for the first time, Katniss has a certain idea of him, an idea that has been planted in the minds of Panem’s population by Snow to tell a specific story, a story that fits his narrative of who the district people are. Haymitch’s acts of the defiance have been successfully erased by Snow and his gamemakers, making sure that the new generations don’t get any ideas.
In this newest Hunger Games book, we learn why Haymitch is so set on helping Katniss, his personal connection to her and an old promise he made long ago. It connects the dots between The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and the original trilogy and gives us a much more nuanced look into the world of Panem. It made me cry actual tears as I got to the end, a true testament to Collins’ writing, and I simply could not put it down.
I always encourage people to read in release order rather than chronological so if you have read this review and are intrigued but have not read The Hunger Games, I urge you to go and buy all three original Hunger Games books, a bottle of wine, a box of tissues and a therapy session and get started. If you already have read the originals but never got around to reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, fret not. Although I would recommend reading TBOSAS (because it is amazing and I love it) you can get away with simply watching the movie (which is also excellent) so you don’t miss out on too many of the easter eggs Collins has so cleverly planted in this novel. And if you are an adult reading this, thinking these books are not for you, you are mistaken. Reading The Hunger Games as an adult is a scary experience as you realise much of it isn’t really a dystopian nightmare but something happening in our world today.
All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable (though emotionally damaging) read that I would recommend to anyone who loves their protagonists with a little – or a lot – of trauma.
Run don’t walk to your local bookstore and get yourself a copy.”