My library reservation for Suzanne Collins’ Sunrise on the Reaping, the lastest book in her Hunger Games collection, finally came in two days after I finished watching the remarkable second season of Andor. I have really enjoyed and thought about Collins’ novels over the years, so I knew what I was getting into, but that was a weighty few days of pop culture consumption.
Sunrise on the Reaping takes the reader back to the 50th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell we first heard about in the original trilogy. Haymitch Abernathy had kept pretty quiet about his experience in the original trilogy, but was obviously deeply traumatized and self-medicating with alcohol by the time he started to pull himself together to famously help Katnniss and Peeta. In this new novel, we see Haymitch as a 16 year old in District 12, making a good life for himself in the Seam with friends, family and a deep love for a Covey girl (similar to Lucy Gray Baird in A Ballad of Songbird and Snakes). His birthday in on reaping day, and his love Lenore Dove tries to imagine a day in the future when he can have a birthday with no reaping. It is hard for him to picture such a thing, justifiably, and we get to see how his perception of the world around him evolves as he works his way through his Hunger Games.
One of my favorite things throughout Collins’s novels is how well she writes angry girls and women. Women in her novels are allowed to have rage – some of them are good people (Katniss) and some of them are not (Coin), but all of them are complicated and interesting and fully thought out. With Sunrise, we get an introduction to Maysilee Donner, who we hear about a bit in the original trilogy, but get to spend quite a bit of time with here. She is intelligent and courageous and prickly and absolutely seething – a remarkable character. I hope the newly announced movie serves her well.
This book is, unsurprisingly, excellent – tightly plotted, great characterization, and just heart-rending. Collins is a very thoughtful writer, and the idea she is exploring here is inspired by a David Hume quote that addresses implicit submission, and why people are so inclined to just “resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.” It’s so difficult to think about – why do people give up so easily, why are we so dominated by propaganda? Collins has consistently explored that throughout the collection and it is incredibly and consistently timely with the rise of fascism throughout the world. Andor takes place at a different stage of that continuum, where the Empire’s propaganda can’t quite stack the cards fast enough to maintain control, but despite the differing scales you can see similar themes being explored. Both are amazing bodies of work, both are sadly pertinent to current life, and I will think about them both for a long time to come.