Sunrise on the Reaping Part 1 - Suzanne Collins - Young Adult - Dystopian - Book

One of us has a theory that this book was ghostwritten and badly edited.

Part 1 of 3 on SUNRISE ON THE REAPING by Suzanne Collins — the plot, top to bottom, full spoilers.

Jules walks through the prose inconsistencies that made her suspect a second hand on the manuscript. Slava reread all three Hunger Games books and watched four movies out of spite, and still landed at 3.5 out of 5. We argue about whether Snow is a Disney villain, why Haymitch works as a foil to a character who isn't in this book, how much Edgar Allan Poe is too much Edgar Allan Poe, and the inventory scene that made someone physically facepalm. Ratings from all four of us at the end, plus the movie scenes we want most. Part two takes on themes and character arcs.
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Creators and Guests

Host

Jonathan

Host

Slava

Digital Strategist. Co-Host. Aspiring writer of stories.

What is The Side Quest Book Club Podcast?

If you’re a reader looking for something deeper or an indie author working on your book, The Side Quest Book Club is for you. We skip the usual book reviews and ratings. Each episode turns fun side quests into real lessons, so you’ll leave not just entertained, but with a better understanding of why storytelling matters.

My theory is that it was ghostwritten, not edited properly. The movie's gonna be pretty great. This book however, is bullshit.

Oh my god. It's all warbly, so, you know, there's that. We're just wondering why that- I love when they do this with the sides of the books.

Yeah. It's probably some kid from District 9 with, like, bloodied hands. Working midnight to print that out.

Or no, he wasn't even printing, he was drawing it by hand. I hope they kill his family, because they didn't do a very good job. I hope so too.

Oh my god. But Sunrise on the Reaping is coming out this fall, and I'm gonna go see it. But, today we're gonna talk about the plot, and just top to bottom, so if you haven't finished the book, then come back to this afterward.

We're gonna talk about what worked, what didn't, our theories of what may have not taken place, which we'll hold till the end. With the writing of this book? Yeah. Anyway, there it is.

Sunrise on the Reaping is written with the focus as a prelude to The Hunger Games, but a focus on Haymitch, who is the mentor of Katniss and Peeta. Peeta! Right? And in the second book of The Hunger Games, because, and I will tell you, I did reread all The Hunger Games and watch all the movies before this show, specifically for reasons that will be unfolded later. And you will absolutely hear about that.

We learn his whole Hunger Games journey in book two, in a short paragraph, when Katniss and Peeta are being brought back into the games, and they're like, well, we haven't watched his tape, should we? I don't know. And then they watch it, and he's behind them, and he's like, yeah, this is what it was like. So I fact-checked, and it is 100% the same outline that you get here as a book.

So if you've read The Hunger Games, you already know the story before going in. But I will pause for a moment and get the squad's reaction here. Tell me what the intro of the plot, he's getting called for The Hunger Games.

What was that like for you guys? Was it thrilling? Was it boring? I thought it was interesting. I was very curious how they would make that interesting, because obviously we all know he's going to the games one way or another. So I was like, is he going to get called as almost opposition to Katniss, where she has this big moment where she volunteers, and he just gets called first name or whatever.

It's like, oh, dang, he's already in it. Or, I mean, I wondered if he was going to end up volunteering or whatever. I liked what they ended up going with.

I think it makes sense for what they were going for with this character, that it would be because of his girl that he would get into trouble. And, I mean, he's a troublemaker throughout the book. So it's a very good job of setting up what he's going to be like, I'd say.

Yeah, I went in with low expectations into these books, because they're young adult, and they're popular, and it's the century we live in. And so I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I read both Sunrise and The Hunger Games, and I read the part that you referenced, Jonathan.

I didn't think them pulling that outline out and expanding on it was a bad thing. I did not not enjoy it. It was fine.

The book was fine. This is fine. That's where I'm standing on it.

For young adult books, kind of coming-of-age stories, it wasn't groundbreaking, it wasn't anything that blew my mind. I just enjoyed them, and I liked the endings of both books. I thought that they're bittersweet, a little melancholy endings.

There's a cliffhanger in Hunger Games that I enjoyed right at the end. I think they complement each other well. So Slava, you found the young adult just kind of like, it's okay.

Yeah, it's okay. I understand why people love it. I understand why the movies are popular.

But I'm not a super fan. But when you started reading it, and you said you already hated it like two chapters in, I was like, ah, this is going to suck. And then my expectations were lowered even more.

Then I went into it, I was like, oh, this doesn't suck at all. This is an all-right book. That's a bit of our back and forth, though.

We don't always like the same books. But yeah, overall, I enjoyed the story. And I thought certain parts of it that I did enjoy after reading both books, it seemed that certain plot points were rinse and repeat.

Not to the point where I'm like, this is a bit lazy. Like the kids feeling the same feelings, the kids going through almost the same thing, Haymitch and Katniss having the same reactions, the same setups. I was like, wow, that's lazy.

But again, what 14-year-old is going to care? Unless they're really into books. So you're judging this through the audience and your perception of their perception. Well, it's part of my judgment, yeah.

Fair enough. When the calling was going for the reaping, I was sitting there going through it, and I was like, they can't do what they did with Katniss, because that would be boring. They can't just call his name, because that would be boring.

And I was like, what is the author going to do? And so I wasn't even really paying attention to the things that took place for the plot as much as I was wondering what the author was going to use as a mechanism to force him into the games. And so I did, to Evan's point, I did like that they did something, I'll call it different. But it didn't have the same emotional attachment for me the way that it does when Katniss volunteers to take the place of her sister.

I agree. I agree with that. I also agree that is entirely the plot device.

And I think it's actually, while it's good that they went that route, because the other alternatives would have been worse. It's still lazy plot movements for me. It hinges everything on the fact that he has this obsession over getting back to his girl.

That's the only thing. Or the fact that he knows that he's never going to get back to her, but everything that happens. And then the end, which I won't spoil yet.

But it's just about this one girl. What's interesting to me, and I didn't read the book, but I did watch the movie, which was terrible. But the plotting of the movie was good.

Not the Hunger Games, the one about snow. Ballads for songbirds and snakes. It mirrors, yeah, the ballad one.

Yeah, it mirrors Snow and the Covey Girl, right? So that was great. I liked that mirroring because the entire time through the plot, Snow is the opposition. Yes, technically, the games and being in the arena are the opposition.

But really, at the end of the day, it's all about Haymitch versus Snow. If you look at it from the lens of who is the true enemy for him. Which, I will say, was a nice nod to don't forget who the enemy is later on down the road.

Okay, so that part I really liked. I don't know if it was intentional, but I did pick up on that. And for me, thinking about it from that lens was like, okay, this, from a literary perspective, makes sense.

Because it ties the core pulse of the entire series, which is Snow, who shouldn't be the weird Disney villain that he is. Yet somehow becomes. And then he is driving these people through literal torture and mutilation under the guise of peace.

So that part I really like. That's what makes the Hunger Games good. I don't know if people look at it that way, but that's how I looked at it.

Did I enjoy the book? No. I don't think it was very well written. I have things and thoughts on that.

However, I do appreciate the world that I was able to orient myself into knowing what the plot of the other books was. If I had read this first, I never would read anything else by her. It's not my style.

I don't like it from that perspective. I don't know how to put myself in the mindset of a YA audience, which is why I can't bring myself there. It might be enjoyable.

I don't know, though. I don't know. I can't factually say that it would be enjoyable for a 14-year-old girl, for example.

I don't know. Even though I was one at one point. I don't remember, though.

What about people who grew up with The Hunger Games? I never read it. I think after reading both of these books, I don't want to read anything else. It's too good to put on the shelf.

I know enough of the story of what happens in ballads and the two books that follow Hunger Games. I read Haymitch's story because I know him from movie lore. I know his character.

I was like, oh, here's this character as a kid. Maybe that's why I enjoyed it more than you guys did. I was like, okay, this is a decent dive into Haymitch's life.

Then I read Hunger Games to understand Jonathan's point and to see them together as a whole story. When Hunger Games ends and Katniss is ascending on the platform and everything is okay because they survived. I was like, oh, okay.

This is a movie that ends ambiguously or a story that ends ambiguously. Then I had a credit to burn. I was like, you know what? I'm going to buy an anthology of short stories.

That's what I did. To your point, Jules, I understand why you don't like it at all. You too, Jonathan.

After reading this and enjoying it, I don't care to read more. That's the level of my enjoyment. Yeah.

Jules, you brought up something that I never caught because I didn't read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I did watch the movie, though. Frankly, that movie was forgettable.

Tell us more real quick before we keep moving on to taking the train to the capital of this idea of Haymitch and Snow. The roles and Milk. That solidified that entire plot beat for me.

And actually is what the all the antagonistic behavior against Haymitch, the core driving force for him and his love for Lenore, was how she what happens at the end, right? And that is a presence theme in the entirety of this book. So what's interesting to me is Snow has this requirement, this food requirement, this food and drink requirement, Haymitch throws a wrench in it actively, which he's already on the shit list with Snow because of his previous actions. And to add salt to the wound, acting as a rebellious teenager that he is, he's like, oh, I'm going to do this other thing in the presence of not only Snow, who I'm sure has cameras and all sorts of other things everywhere.

So he's fully aware of who's responsible. And even if he didn't, there's only a few circumstances that he can attribute to. And even so, at the end of the day, because I did mention this, Snow is a Disney villain, and he acts the way that he wants and will punish those that don't go with how he wants them to go.

And that goes across the board. I mean, it's it's the pulse of the entire Hunger Games is how horrible can Snow be to human beings? Like, I mean, that's basically what it is. He had a chance.

And in the early version of Snow, Snow also felt that the Hunger Games was wrong in some way. There was a moment there. And instead of choosing to help dismantle it, he chose to not only uphold it, but then to bolster it.

And so it's, I'm more interested in Snow than I was in the heroes of the story. Because how did we get to the point where he orders executions of people that were victors? And how does he get to the point where he wipes out entire districts? That is, for me, more intriguing as a story beat than a boy in love with a girl and getting in trouble because of it. A tale as old as time.

Yeah. So you say Disney villain. Can you define that for us real quick? Yeah.

So for me, Disney villain is, they're just bad because we wrote them to be bad, but there's really nothing driving it. Okay, cool. So that's pretty much it for the Disney villain.

I disagree with that, but I'll wait until Miss Lava says. Okay, good. Yeah.

So as you were talking, Jules, what came to mind is I pictured myself, this is how my brain works, I pictured myself as a kid or a young man or an old man, irrelevant. I pictured myself as a citizen of one of the districts. And I wouldn't have cared that much.

I went to a high school that was 3,000 people and we had a guy who was in a terrible accident and was disfigured and crippled for the rest of his life. I felt sorry for him. I'm not happy that happened to him, but I was so far removed from him that I was like, it didn't change my life one bit.

And even in his senior year, he was honored at a rally, not a rally, but a pep rally or whatever they had before games. He was honored and everybody loved him. He seemed to be a nice guy before and after the accident, but I was so far removed from him that I couldn't be in that headspace where like, oh, wow, Johnny.

We used to hang out together or he was my neighbor. I had a neighbor who died too and I went to school with him, but I never talked to him. I only rode the bus and he was 40 kids away from me.

So when he died, tragically too, I was like, yeah, it sucks that he's not here, but I don't know the guy. So that is the setup. As much as I enjoyed the story I was taken on, I didn't feel any connections to Haymitch or his love for Lenore or any of it.

I was like, yeah, cool story. And that was it. I wanted to say Jewel said that Snow feels like a villain with no reasoning.

He's just evil to be evil. I feel like what I took from the Songbirds and Snakes movie was that Snow has this desire to, I guess, be a winner. And so he kind of starts as this like, you kind of sympathize with him when he's helping Lucy Gray as like his tribute or whatever, as her mentor.

And you're like, okay, he's like kind of a good person, like he's helping her win, like blah, blah, blah. But then as the story progresses, you realize it's less about him actually helping her and caring about her winning and more like, if she wins, I win. And now that that's over with, the story changes and it's like, now that I don't need her anymore, he starts killing people that aren't useful to him.

And he eventually pushes her away and like, maybe kills her. And I think that contrasts the Haymitch because Haymitch, I feel like they almost base, like, I think half of his character is kind of his relationships. But the other half is like almost entirely built off of a contrast with Snow, where they have Snow who's willing to do anything to win.

And then Haymitch, who like wants to do what's right and wants to paint his poster or whatever. But he also doesn't want to like sacrifice much for it. Or like, you know what I mean? Like he'll do something that like causes damage to the capital, and then he gets punished for it.

And then he kind of like goes back and like hides and like becomes a good boy again or whatever, until he finally becomes, does something rebellious again. I feel like he doesn't have the resolve that Snow has. I don't love that his character almost seems like it's based around Snow in a movie that's not really related.

So he's a foil character. Yeah, he feels like a foil to someone, to a character who's like not really in the book. Because everything that I know about Snow is from that other movie.

I see where you're going in that direction. But here's the problem that I have. Even in the movie, which we see devolution, right? We see the opposite of an evolution for Snow.

He starts off with the idea and I agree mindset, I want to win. And then he sees how people are being treated. And he's like, I don't know if I feel okay with this.

Right. What was her name? Gray, Lucy Gray. Yeah.

Lucy Gray. So he helps her, helps her win and gets himself in trouble by doing so. Tremendously, by the way.

Gets exiled, basically. But he chooses to get exiled to District 12, where she is. So they try to sell us this idea that Snow has been in love with this covey girl.

And in response to that, love does horrible things. Including murder. And he's done it twice already before that with being in the arena and going in there and all that other stuff.

Spoilers for the movie. And so you see. He goes to these extremes because of his supposed love for this girl.

But the entire time he's conflicted with himself because then he tries to kill her. Because he's like, wait a minute, hold on. I can't trust this person, even though she put her entire trust in him.

He is the only reason she survived the games. Truly the only reason. And so he takes that and he uses it against her.

And forces her to either flee or potentially die. We don't really technically know based on the way the movie ends. We suspect.

And he blames her for all of the problems. He blames her. So for me, that's very Disney villain.

Because it's like, you just basically spent all this time protecting this one person and now you just turn on them? Like, come on. Okay. For me, it wasn't believable.

I don't believe it. But I understand what you're saying on how there was more focus given to Snow inadvertently in this book. Because of the connection that you make.

If you make the connection. Otherwise, if you just read it all the way through, it is what it is. It's about Haymitch who's in love and goes through horrible things in the games and then gets punished for it anyway.

That's kind of like the nutshell, right? But I get what you're saying, for sure. So as the story progresses, like, he gets chosen. Then they throw him on the train here.

And Haymitch discovers, I'll say discovers, right? Because he hasn't been in the games before. That the Capitol is, you know, not interested in showing anything that is going to undercut themselves. Right? Like, he watches the playback and he's like, well, that's not what happened.

Right? And he has this opening revelation in the first four chapters here that the Capitol is not always telling the truth. They paint the story however they want it. And then he has this memory of Roxy coming into the voice of the background on Slava's mic.

She really hated the book, too. Yeah. That's actually how Slava reads all these books.

He reads them to his dogs. And his opinion is based on how they respond. Perfect.

Every Fourth of July, they hate whatever book we're reading. So there is that. That's pretty funny.

But anyway, so Haymitch has this understanding that the Capitol will repaint pictures however they want. And he remembers this advice that someone had told one of the previous tributes that don't let the Capitol paint their propaganda posters with your blood. Right? And so then he starts to go, okay, well, if that's the case, am I going to participate in the non, you know, in the rebellion of sorts? It's not a rebellion yet, but it's the early groundswell.

Right. Or not. And then they get over to the parade.

They got everybody dolled up and dressed up and somebody throws a firework, you know, and that ends up killing the other girl from his, from his. Yeah. Yeah.

And then he's like, yeah, he's, he's like, what are we doing here? And so it's just, it's that starts to fuel more of the groundswell. Right. So did we believe that in the story? Is that believable enough? Jewel's face.

I don't understand. I don't, I don't feel like if I, if I pretend that I don't know anything about humans, right. Like nothing at all.

I don't understand how we went from, I'm going to keep my head down and just do what needs to be done to, I'm going to go and take this chariot all the way to snow's residents and show him the dead body. Like how did we get from point A to B? Like, where was that thought process for me? It was maybe it was just a weekly written and I didn't really catch when that happened. Like I said before, I've gone back a few times when I would read something and I'd be like, wait, wait a minute.

How did we, how do we establish that? Like where, where was that point made to make me believe that the sequence of events would happen? And maybe that's just me being hypercritical. I obviously have very strong opinions on how we, we progress through things. And I feel like it wasn't really set up very well.

And it was very sudden, like the, the suddenness of it and it wasn't sudden to like, be like, Oh my God. Wow. It was sudden.

Like, wait, what? That's the sudden that it was for me personally, but not believe it. Yeah. For being young adult, I had some expectations that there would be more like, here's the exposition to you.

Like, like anime, right? Like, yeah. Didn't you know that he was the three-time winner at the world championship? He'll punch your face off. And you're like, I think he was the three-time winner at the world championship.

Yeah. How I got there was, Oh, he's distraught about Loyola dying. Oh, he's going through a traumatic thing.

Oh, he has a swell of anger. He's going to show the man because he's 16 and full of pitch vinegar. And then it happened, but it did happen fast.

Everything happened very fast in the book. It was a very fast paced book. Yeah.

That's how I got there. It was just like a teenage. I want to call it angst.

It wasn't angst, but a teenager in the swell of all these emotions is decides to do something outlandish or outrageous. But I think where I agree with you Jules is to such a feat and such a display of disrespect and rebellion seems too much too quickly. Right? Like I can understand how somebody can think that, but for me, I, I didn't even, I didn't even go that deep.

I was just like, Oh, it's just a sad, angry kid trying to, you know, vent somehow. And he doesn't know what he's doing. Right.

It's not like he's playing out. I'm going to vent now. It's to him.

Just it's an explosion of emotions. Yeah. I mean, I kind of agree.

Honestly, I viewed it as he's mad. His friend died. So he outlet, uh, what's the word? Lashes out.

Not that complicated, I guess. But yeah, I guess I didn't really think about like the internal lead up of like, he doesn't know if he wants to fight back too. He's flipping off the president essentially.

Yeah. That's it. This is just a given the bird to the principal, right.

You know, we're putting in high school terms. That was, that's what happened in that scene. But it's, it makes you question with the severity of punishment that is obviously set up.

Would you really do that? I'm sorry. But like, even if you're rebelling and having like a response to me, again, my perspective is completely different. So I understand.

But to me to go that far right off the bat, I was like, Oh, so he just wants to get executed. Like I know, I know. I know that it's like, Oh, they're going to die anyway.

Right. Cause it's a hundred and that like, I get that premise, but to just go from zero to a hundred was, it was, it was a tough sell for me. And so to that point, right.

Like the next day he goes into the training system and whatever, and he has this revelation where, uh, the other kids, uh, the other reaping kids, dad is forced to mentor him. And he's like, Oh yeah. They're making him do this.

And he knows his son's going to die. Yeah. And he he's made, we now know that he's made the decision.

Like I'm going to fight the Capitol, even if that kills me because it's right. But it's, it's the inciting incident that happens that we were just talking about that frustrates me about books where it's like, okay, I want to believe you. I'm here to be entertained.

I'm, I'm I'm on board with the journey, but if I don't believe the inciting incident, then I don't care. And so that part I struggle with because it's like, I'm here to be entertained. And I have not in a long time, did not finish a book.

The last book that I did not finish is the wandering in by some person who the first book is just too whiny and I couldn't do it. Um, but that's like a complaint of across that person's community. And then they were like going to re-release a canonized book one to fix that because they're like 20 books deep and people are like, oh, the series is really great.

If you can get past the first book, that's like, well, that's a big hurdle. Yeah. Anyway, that's a different story for a different time.

Maybe we'll read it probably won't anyway. Um, but this idea that the father has to mentor his son, like it, it then reemphasizes to us, the Capitol's like, uh, you guys are just savages. Yeah.

I actually really liked BD's character and the, and the others. So for me, um, I, I did appreciate bringing in familiar characters. If you had read or watched even the other, uh, the initial hunger games trilogy, uh, or it's should have been a trilogy.

Um, but, uh, the, the, the initial hunger games and the Muffin J and all that stuff. So, um, I agree entirely that we are reinforced many times about the brutality of the Capitol through the, throughout this book as well. Um, which that I think is done well, even if it was what felt like shock factor, I do have a preferred death scene, uh, that I bookmarked.

Um, so where is it? Oh, no, that's the face palm. Hold on. Hold on.

Okay. This one is my gold marker. So Amfort's death was actually, am I allowed to talk about spoilers like that? Oh yeah.

Yeah. Uh, Amfort's death. I knew it was going to happen.

I just didn't realize how horrible and horrific it was going to be. So I highlighted that. I was like, that actually was entertaining to read.

Not because I relish his death. I knew it was eventually going to happen because that has to be how it happens, but I didn't know how they were going to actually kill him. And it was worse than I would have imagined.

Rectangular front teeth and agitation. Mutts. They only pause to emit piercing rodent screams at a mound of their comrades in the center of the clearing.

The boldest are fighting viciously, throwing themselves onto the heap, kicking one another away with powerful hindquarters. One flies through the air and lands at my feet. Before it springs back up, I spy a bloody scrap of electric blue fabric snagged on its incisors and everything becomes clear.

Carnivorous mutts tearing Amfort apart. I promised Beatty I would not let him suffer. Flinging my hammock to its full length, I holler and lunge for the pile.

The hammock snares the furry bodies and I jerk it toward me, succeeding in unseating a layer or two of mutts. Then I flip around my spear and use it as a club and swing it across the mound again and again, sweeping the squirrels away. I prepare myself for their attack, for the inevitable tearing of my flesh, but nothing happens.

The moment one's knocked free of the mound, it dives back in. These are programmed for Amfort and Amfort alone. His look, his smell, his taste.

I am losing. I am losing the fight. I am losing him.

I know this, but there's nothing to do but keep swinging. I never even get a glimpse of Amfort, just writhing furry bodies fighting for a piece of him. Finally, as if someone blew a whistle, audible only to them, hundreds of heads pop up and turn in unison toward an unseen master.

A mad dash ensues, and in seconds the squirrels have vanished into the foliage. Panting, I watch them fade away. Then I turn back to what I am meant to witness.

A small white skeleton, stripped clean to the bone. No flesh or clothing remains. Only an axe at its right side, my knife at its left.

My lips move, but no sound comes out. Um, so that particular scene, starting off, that was more impactful than, and this is, that's how many pages in to when I actually liked something. Okay, that's a, that's a problem.

We're at the end of the freaking book, guys. Like, for me, if it takes that long for me to enjoy something that I'm reading, that's a problem for me. But, but, excellently done.

Despite the fact that I was like, oh yeah, that's right. This is a great foreshadowing reason for, for Hamish to become how he is later. Like, this particular scene for me sold who Hamish becomes because of what he witnesses.

And then the rest of it's reinforced later on with the, the other deaths. Up until that point, Hamish really was just a teenager to me. Like non-consequential kind of situation where I didn't really care until, until that very moment.

And that was because of BD. And then my thought process was like, oh my God, he, his kid. And like the ramifications of what that means for BD and the fact that BD stays, stays at the Capitol because he has no choice for as long as he does until the actual Hunger Games like happens, right? Like the rest of the series, I'm like, holy crap, that's insane.

Like the level of willpower BD has to have to continue contributing to the Capitol that literally murders his son. Holy shit. You know, that, that's, that's enticing.

That's, that's entertaining to me. Yeah. The, I, that I will give credit to.

They did a good job at doing world building connections. You know, node connections between pieces of the world. That was, that was good.

I liked that. But it looked like you wrote in your book, Jules. Let's do a quick side quest.

Who annotates in their books? Raise of hands. Evans alone. All right.

He's like, they tell me I can't write in the library. They're like little, little transparent post-its. Oh, yeah.

My point remains. I will actually, I will actually write in a book. Yeah.

Nope. It's been too, it's been too recent since high school for me that like annotating is like still like, I just think of like assignments. It's only been like three years since I graduated.

Yeah. See those reference? Well, reference books. I just got a point at things in my background.

Over there are reference books. I will annotate the crap out of those in pages. And I have a whole color system and underlying system.

But if you take a regular book like it or whatever, or this book, if I wanted to write a note in it, it would be post-its. Yeah. Because a fiction book, I feel like should be clean.

So I can look nice. And if I let somebody borrow it, I don't have to read my ramblings that I might change my mind on. But that's what I love about it.

You're basically pulling from the past to the present someone's thoughts. That's why I like annotation. So like if I take one of your books, Slava, that you read your first version of it and you were annotating and I can go, oh, this is what he was thinking.

And I don't, you know, so if you go to like a used bookstore or a thrift shop and you buy a book and you're like, I can tell what Dorothy was reading when she read, you know, the first version of the Raven. She's making notes. She's like, wow, this is really dark, whatever.

And that's cool to me. That's like a step into the past, you know? Yeah. So everyone should write in their books, except for the nice looking copy ones.

You know, these, we just put on the shelves as trophies. Yeah. Oh man.

That's funny. In reality, some guy in 30 years is going to open Slava's copy and see his grocery list. It's the only thing I have on me and I have a pen.

Lettuce, tomato, fettuccine. Doritos. Diet Coke.

Hebrew National. Oh, Anne Prince being in a line. Well, that's interesting.

Good thing I had a hot dog before I read this book. So the story keeps moving on, right? With there being like alliances are starting to form. And then eventually there's a threat for Hamish, you know, by snow.

And it kind of moves forward. What are these pieces? So I like what Jules did here. She's got these moments that stuck out to her for better and worse, because I want to hear about the face palm one here in a minute.

What about you other guys? Did anything stick out as the story was rolling on? The use of PO. I never really knew where it was going besides just Lenore. I'm like, okay.

Yeah. I like PO too. PO is great.

And I think Collins did a decent job of trying to weave it in. But at points I was like, all right, why am I reading PO? I know it's copyright free. It's in public domain.

But now I'm reading PO. If I wanted to read PO, I'd pick up my PO book. When I was reading it, I texted Slava.

I was like, hey, be sure to reread The Raven before you read this book. I didn't need to. I read it between the pages.

It was a play within a play. Dude, I skipped every freaking PO part. I was just like, I already know that.

I get it. It's about Lenore. Thank you very much for reiterating the same thing for like 15 pages.

I appreciate it. Yeah. That was a bit much.

Evan, have you read PO before? No. Are you referring to like the random poems in the book? Yes. Okay.

Yeah. All right. That's a nice thought.

I'm going to go take my old man pills now. You're so old now. So those random poems, Evan, are written by Edgar Allan Poe.

Oh, that's Edgar? I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And the main character in the poem is Lenore. Is that The Raven? Yes.

Okay. That makes sense. I didn't even realize that.

So this is why. So the three of us have read it before, Evan. But this is why.

And I love this moment right now, right? Like where I think that's why the author put that in because it's like, well, the younger generation hasn't. I don't remember being required to read Poe in school. And so like you wouldn't know that that's like a legitimate author from back in the day who married his cousin and there's a bunch of other problems.

But it does seem kind of apt to put him in. Maybe not this specific poem, but like because he's so. But I think that that's part of the reason the author chose like, hey, it's in public domain.

I can make this happen. And it's kind of like it helped anchor, I think, the world a little bit. Not a lot, but it was.

But on the other side of the coin, it's also like a little, not a little. But on the other side of the coin, it's also way too much. Yeah.

Yeah. Just like. You guys know that this is Edgar Allen Poe.

That's because Suzanne Collins needs to make sure her books are getting read in English class. There it is. Wow.

Because I read the first hunger games in English class. What did you really? Like ninth grade or something like. We had to read Romeo and Juliet.

Is that. We read some. We read Edgar Allen Poe too.

You did. Hunger games is in there. Yeah.

Wow. Huh. And what a time to be alive.

Different world these days. Yeah. Yeah.

Different world. Oh man. So Jules, what was the, what was the baseball moment? You're like, which one? There was a few.

But. I wrote a lot of exclamation points on this one. I wrote, I facepalmed so hard.

Are we really this dumb? I'm sorry. Have you been in the modern world? Okay. Yeah, no, but in a book.

Okay. So. I wrote, I don't buy this.

This is. An annoying character moment. Because he, okay, this is chapter eight.

16. Page 218 and the collectors, whatever this is. Okay.

Hold on. Okay. So I, I, I did.

The, this was the whole poison thing. Okay. With.

He's literally freaking going through his inventory. And he has charcoal tablets. Okay.

We have deductive reasoning and he has displayed up to that point. Deductive reasoning. So we know he's not a complete idiot.

And yet he's sitting there and he's like poison. Oh, no, what do I do? And I'm like. Really? What do you do now? Granted it didn't work.

Well, but, but the immediate. I mean, he goes for potatoes first. I mean, come on.

Honestly. I couldn't, I'm sorry. That angered me truly.

Like you eat a raw potato. For poisoning. Potatoes.

You don't eat potatoes for poisoning. Oh, and one hand I have charcoal tablets that I know help with indigestion and problems with the stomach. On the other hand, I have a raw potato.

Which one am I going to go for? The level. It's dangerous. I'm sorry.

I couldn't. I literally face palm, like actually physically brought face to hand. While eating.

Good for whatever ails your belly. Fire, wind or poison. I can't, I literally.

Without. I spit out the potato. Yeah.

Oh, brilliant. Yeah. Not the sharpest tool in the shed here.

But the worst part is he displays constant reasoning and critical thinking before that. So why in this specific moment, does he laugh so poorly in judgment? And it can't be because of panic. I'm sorry, like that.

I can't, I can't buy that. Because up until that point, even in moments of stress, he was making decisions quickly and accurately. Like leaving the cornucopia grabbing a bag to go in stressful moments.

So you can't use that as an excuse that, oh, poisoning stress doesn't have any thought process. No, that's not, that's not legitimate for me. Like I can't, I can't go with that.

So there's my two cents. Did you guys have any face palm moments, Slava and Evan? I don't think so. Because I wasn't seriously reading it.

Like, I mean, I was reading it and I was absorbing it so we can discuss it. So I wasn't skimming. But I, I did not, and maybe to my own detriment, I did not like dissect the book the way you and Jules did.

The way I normally do when I read books. I was just kind of, I was just along. I was like the raven.

Just kind of, you know, you know, flying around Haymitch like getting a bird's eye view of this kid's life. And that was it. Quote this Slava.

Yeah. I don't think I really had, nothing's coming to mind. I feel like, I think a lot of the book was just on the nose and face palm me like the whole way through.

Perfect. Yeah. So, the moment that I've been waiting for is to talk about how much I dislike the writing of this book.

We've kind of sprinkled it in here and there. I'm reading this book, and out of spite, I went to reread all of the other books, not Songbirds and Ballads and whatever, because I don't own that one. But all three Hunger Games books, and then I watched all four Hunger Games movies to prepare for this book club series.

Because the writing felt highly inconsistent to me. I was like, I'm not emotionally attached to the character. But I remember when I read the Hunger Games, I'm like, I feel like it was the first few chapters and I'm like instantly attached to the character.

Facts. The moment I hit play, because I went straight from Sunrise on the Reaping over to Hunger Games, I was three chapters in and I was like, oh yes, I'm absolutely on board with what Katniss did for her sister. I'm in.

We're here. There's compassion. There's like, oh my god, I can't believe they're doing this to you.

Three chapters. However, it took a full book of me reading this to go, I just don't believe it. I just don't, I'm just not, I'm not there.

And also the writing felt wrong, inconsistent. Something was different. Like, I know that Suzanne Collins knows how to write.

So Suzanne, this is not a slight against your inability to write as a whole, like I do to China Mayville in The City in the City, in the one book that I read from him. Shout out China Mayville, go buy his book or something. It is a call out to the fact that this feels subpar.

Like, it's a copy and paste from book two of the outline. Like, cool. Great.

Let's do two chapters on this one sentence, three chapters on this. Great. Now we'll do one round of revisions, turn it into a very shiny holographic, which I do like, and then we're going to make a movie out of it.

So it feels like a money grab. All over threads, over the books, the bookstagram and booktalk, like people are like, oh, people are making books for money grabs. I don't think you understand how A, business works or B, money grabs work because that's not how money grabs work.

However, in this instance, this does feel like a money grab because she's already an established author and it feels like we didn't learn anything new. There's nothing new in this book. And I just don't like that.

I don't like it. I want something. I want to go on an emotional journey.

I want to – I'm here to be entertained. Are you not entertained? If I don't want to be entertained, I'll go stare at paint drying. This feels like they took a script for the movie and they were like, oh, yeah, the movie is going to be good.

And they're like, wait, what if instead of putting the movie out first, we do a book first and we make more money? And someone was like, oh, yeah, that's smart. Why don't we do that? So they took a script because this feels like a movie script. That's all this feels like.

I saw the movie the entire time I was reading this book. And that's not a bad thing. I used to be a filmmaker.

That's a good thing. However, as a novel, it should have more character growth. It should have more plot points.

It should have moments where I go, oh, and then, oh, I can't believe this. Yeah. So I'm over it.

I'm done with it. We're, you know, we got two more episodes to record about themes and characters and development. But this feels like I'm just watching the movie.

So I think the movie is going to be pretty great. This book, however, is bullshit. Well, I was going to agree with you and say that I also felt more emotionally attached to Katniss in The Hunger Games.

I liked her as a character. She was a stronger character, like both willpower, intellect, and as an imaginary person that I'm reading about on the page. So I did like Katniss a lot better than I liked Haymitch.

But that's comparing the two, right? Like, if I never knew that Hunger Games lore existed or any of the movies, so I didn't know as much as I do about it without even watching the movies, it's like Star Wars. I've never watched a Star Wars movie, but I know enough about Star Wars to carry a conversation because it's a lore to Zeitgeist. So I've never read Hunger Games, never saw Hunger Games.

Let's pretend I didn't know anything about them. Reading Sunrise on a Reaping by itself, I think I would have been— You started book banning and a book burning campaign? No, I think I would have been in the same space that I'm now. It's like, ah, okay, it's all right.

But now that I've went further, so I can—this is a prequel, so I wanted to know, okay, so what's Haymitch's childhood like, right? And reading them together—this is coming back to what I said in the beginning of the episode. Reading them together and getting a chance to compare the stories, a lot of the stuff that the characters go through, it's almost mirror for mirror how they react to things and how they process things before the Reaping, during the Calling, all this stuff, the way they process being alone in the arena, it seems like copy and paste, change he to she, right? But Katniss is a much stronger character, even when she has her doubts, even when she's going through all the emotions she's going through, she's just a stronger character, better written character. So I'll agree with that, because I didn't care the copy and paste of the outline, because how else are you going to do it? Maybe it is a money grab, who the hell knows, but I'm saying I didn't think—I didn't find that offensive as much as you did.

But I do agree with one point there. That's all I have. Carry on.

Being offended is one of my favorite hobbies. I think there's two reasons for me that I just don't really care about Haymitch compared— or I didn't connect with him as opposed to Katniss. And that's one, kind of as I was saying before, and his contrast to Snow, I feel like Haymitch doesn't commit to anything.

He's constantly back and forth. He does not have a—I feel like he almost doesn't even have a character arc, because he will do something to go against the Capitol and then immediately feels bad about it, and bad stuff happens and goes back to being their poster child. So there's that, and I think there's also—I can't remember what it was that the first Hunger Games did to get us attached to Katniss and Primrose.

But with—the equivalent is Haymitch and Lenore, and I just don't care about Lenore at all, no matter how many Edgar Allen Poe quotes you'll have. The way they frame her is a girl that he is obsessed head over heels with, but she goes and causes problems and gets other people killed for them, gets him put in the reaping for them, and I don't understand the positive qualities of her character. Why does he like her? I agree completely.

That's why it felt very strawman for the plot, because everything is driven by this love, and the arc that they gave Snow in Ballads was stronger than what we got in this for Haymitch and Lenore, between Lucy and Snow. That was stronger, even though I didn't like Lucy Gray as a character, I thought she was really obnoxious, but the connection between them was more believable than the connection between Haymitch and Lenore. And that's why I wasn't sold on the plot from the start, because I was like, why do I care about these characters? Give me something to care about.

It's not enough to know that there are three other books out there, because if this is the prequel, this should stand on its own and say, hey, these are people you should care about. And I never got that, so I completely agree with you, Evan. There's literally nothing to care about for that.

And even the teenage love thing, and we've all been teenagers when we had crushes and all that stuff, so we can relate. I was never a teenager. It just came out that way.

But Katniss, you know, with Peta and her other boy, the hunting fellow. Gabe? Gale. Gale.

Her processing her feelings. Gabe. Her processing her feelings, you know, I believed it.

Because as somebody who had to take care of her family from a very young age, a lot of the things that regular teenagers in a non-dystopian future will go through are a lot more subdued, right? They're a lot more winsome and wholesome, but she had to really take care of her sister and her mother. So the fact that some of her romantic inclinations are muted, that's believable. Yeah.

And then her and Gale, Gabe, whatever his name is, I'll mess it up from now on into perpetuity. Her, you know, kind of distancing herself, almost not realizing that she's distancing herself emotionally in the romantic sense from him. Because she cares for him, he's a partner, he's a brother, she has sisterly affections, as I call them.

There's nothing romantic there. And then Peta comes along and she has memories of him being nice to her. All that is believable.

That's what a real 16, 17-year-old girl would feel. I can believe that as I'm reading this character. Haymitch, on the other end, to Evan's point, he flip-flops a lot.

And his obsession with Lenore, I'm like, okay, so you're just like a love-struck kid. There's reciprocity in that relationship, I get it. But I'm not as emotionally invested in his internal monologues when he's thinking about Lenore, as I am taking on a journey with Katniss where she's trying to figure out, is Peter screwing me? Is he out to get me? And then, oh, he's not out to get me.

Do I like him? I think he likes me. Maybe I like him too. But this other guy, do I like him? And I'm boiling it down to, this is the cliff notes of the cliff notes on what happens inside Katniss' head.

That was more believable. That was more emotionally stimulating, for lack of a better term. I was going on a journey with this young person.

You were bought in. I was bought in. That's a good phrase for it.

Absolutely agree. Am I allowed to say the thing that I said earlier? About my thought on what happened with the writing? Please. Okay, so my theory is that it was ghostwritten and not edited correctly.

And the reason why, specifically on chapter 25, we changed writing styles to clippy, completely. Now, it could have been used as a narrative device. That is a valid way to provide mental breakdown, right? We become more clippy, short in our sentence and thought process.

However, there's no consistency at the beginning either, because at the very start. Take me there, Jules. I'm following.

Page 328 on the Nice Edition. Everybody open your books. No, I'm just kidding.

Okay, so right here. Actually, even later on, before the very end, on 306, which is chapter 23, this is one of the other death scenes. It was so abrupt and bland.

And then you compare it to Amherst and you're like, are these two different writers? Like who wrote these two different scenes? Because they do not match in style and execution. And it's so weird to me because I thought I was doing crazy. I thought I was gaslighting myself at the very beginning of the book because I would read it.

I started reading and I was like, okay, this is the style. I'm not a fan of the writing style, but okay, I get it. This is how we're doing present tense first.

Okay, cool. Got it. Go, go, go.

And then it changes again in like chapter three. And you're like, we have longer sentences now. And there's more thought process going into it.

And it doesn't sound like a 16-year-old boy is talking anymore. What is happening? And it keeps going back and forth, back and forth, throughout the entire book of like, we have super short direct observations made by Haymitch. And then there's these long, eloquent, almost poetic observations later on.

And you're like, are we still in Haymitch's head? Are we still in the same person's head or is somebody else writing this? Because that's what it felt like to me. And it drove me bonkers. So I mentioned earlier that out of spite, I reread the full series and watched four movies, right? That is not a short amount of time.

That took me about another week. I'm not as smart as Jules is. So I didn't notice the things that she just said.

However, I knew, I knew in my heart that something was wrong. And so out of spite, I read the rest of the series again. So I guess you got me there, Suzanne.

But the thing is, I liked The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games was great. The movies were well-produced.

It's just that this thing's bullshit. That's all. If it had stayed consistent, it probably would have had a much easier time digesting it, like for what it was.

But the fact that it was literary wise, right? Like execution, technicalities, inconsistent and frustrating. And the character, as Evan pointed out very well, inconsistent. And not due to plot, but just felt lazy to me.

It was like pick one side or the other, or commit to something at the very least. It just felt very disingenuous to me. And then it was reinforced by the fact that the writing style just did not match up between different chapters.

So I don't know what happened. Maybe it was written by a screenplay writer and they were like, okay, now just let's polish up and fill in the middle and ship it out. I don't know.

That's what it feels like to me. Because it's so, yeah. For all the reasons I mentioned.

It's like really high level. Like there's really nothing deep into it. There's no emotional depth.

Yeah, this scene happens and then this happens. Oh, but then this happens. Exactly.

That's a screenplay writer style completely. Pause. Yep.

Climax. Resolution. Yep.

Agree. So as we wind this episode down, discussing the plot and the book, I can't wait to get into themes and character development in the next episode with you guys. But let's do a final round, Robin, of two things.

You rate the book based on your emotional journey or lack thereof. And then with whatever rating system you decide you deem correct. And then I want to hear one scene that you're looking forward to for the movie.

I'll start us. I don't do star ratings. I do a recommend and not a recommend.

Do not recommend. That's do not recommend. Don't waste your time.

You'd be better off reading the original Hunger Games. Honestly, if you're going to read something. What was the other question? Sorry.

What scene are you looking forward to watching in the movie? Honestly, the very ending. Why? You see it coming, right? You know it's going to happen. You're just waiting for the shoe to drop.

It's like, what's the method going to be? And the chef's kiss is that it's poison. And so for me, I was actually very distraught over how his family goes out. Like I genuinely for that.

I was like only because I know how he becomes later. And I understand on top of Ampert's death and the way that that happened. And like visually as a human being seeing something like that would absolutely also that was not resolved correctly in my opinion in the book.

But regardless, you see that in the like. Holy shit. Right.

Like you have that moment and like it's horrific. The death, the first death that you really truly see. Not not the accidental death.

And then at the very end, the icing on the cake. It was truly so nefarious of snow. Just he was like, here's the cherry on top of that.

And the way the realization like I don't know who they're going to. Who do they pick to play? Hey, Mitch, do we know? The young actor, you mean? Yeah. So I'm genuinely.

Like bought in to see how he sells that moment of realization. Like that. I want to see that.

I want to see that happen in real time of like, oh, it's poison. And I just killed her. Right.

Like that. That moment was like truly the depth of it for me was very, very pointed and a good way to end things, even if it was really terrible, terrible, like as to have that happen to him. But we knew it was going to because snow would never, never let him be happy.

That's true. Yeah. A young actor named Zod, Joseph Zada.

Okay. I don't, I didn't recognize him from anything, so I don't know what to, to base the experience or expectations off of yet. Yeah.

He was in a bunch of stuff that I've never seen before. Okay. We were liars, invisible boys, total control, David Jones locker, the Speedway murders.

Okay. Yeah. I don't know.

He's six too. So he's born in Australia. All right.

Those are the facts that we have for you. Thank you. Elle Fanning is going to be in this.

She's going to play young Effie Trinket. Oh, we'll talk about more, more about the movie. No, you're good.

Evan Slava rating and what scene you're looking forward to in the movie Slava rating. 3.5. Out of 10. 10.

Well, I would say five, but I'll say seven for you too. You can do the math for me. Thanks.

Yeah. Yeah. Out of five.

It's like I said, 3.5. It was fine. I read better young adults books, the hunger games, same author, same series, a hell of a lot better than this one. So 3.5. And the scene that I want to see is when Silke throws the ax at Haymitch and it bounces back.

And because I, I think that'd be comical because I laughed when I read that. I'm like, this is this, what is this? Is this Tom and Jerry? Because like the force field throws the eggs backs at her and it hits her. So I want to see that.

That was my facepalm moment. Actually. I would give the book.

Like two stars out of five. Brutal. Yeah.

That's a four out of 10. Four out of 10. All right.

All right. And the movie is definitely the chariot chaos. That would be very entertaining and action packed.

And then. As an extension. Fake Luella's up here, like first appearance.

I think will be very interesting. I did find it funny that he kept calling her fake Luella throughout the book. Yeah.

Yeah. Then they changed it to Lulu. And I was like, yeah.

The ghost writer got sick of writing it. I could be completely off base on that. Well, Suzanne's one of the, one of the screenwriters I just looked up.

Do with that. What you will. Okay.

So I give it a rating. I think I've decided I'm going to do a new rating system. There's like the positive out of five star where it's like, okay.

So it's like sort of mixing your recommend, do not recommend jewels with the five star system. So like recommend out of five stars and then do not recommend out of five stars. Just to really emphasize the point.

So we're going to go over here to the, do not recommend. And we're going to give it a solid one and a half. Just because I really didn't like it.

It didn't feel like it. Well, there's a bunch of stuff that I want to get into in the next two episodes. So I can't give away all that information yet, but there's, this is the start.

This is the simmering. The pot's about to boil, right? No bread, no milk, just my opinion. And then the thing that I want to watch happen is I want to watch, this is terrible.

I want to watch fake Lulu die. So, you know, just, just because it feels like, not because, you know, the character, whatever, because that's really sad actually, which we'll get into in the character development in next, next episode of what the Capitol did with this person. But because it's, it's the, it's the throwing the wrench into what the Capitol was trying to do.

And it's like, does anyone really believe this? Because it, it's really obvious it's not her. And then like the people in the district, are they just like, they're releasing the feed to the other 11 districts with her included. And then the, the one that they send at 12, like she's omit, like just a lot of things.

So I'm looking forward to her dying, not because she's a person, but because it undercuts the Capitol. So there, those are our thoughts. What do you guys think though? When you read the book, did you like it? Are we completely off here? You believed it.

You grew up with hunger games. So it's like childhood memories. Are you going to be in line for the midnight showing? These are my questions that I want to know.

Grab your gummy bears and come back next week. Yes, Slava. That's aptly said.

Popcorn next. That's right. Popcorn next.

Well, stay tuned next week where we discuss themes and character development or lack thereof, in case you want to get a quick taste of what I'm going to say with more on Sunrise on the Reaping as we lead up to the movie coming out. See you guys on the next one. I have a favor to ask you.

If you like what we're doing, the simplest way to support the show is to hit subscribe. In return, we'll keep leveling up and we'll listen to your feedback and read authors that you suggest. And of course, we'll take side quests along the way.

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