You Tell Me | Referential Marketing and The Uglies

I burbled a bit about The Hunger Games on Monday, in Bargain Books, and if you cast your minds back, you might remember that I also made mention of them last Thursday, in my review of Julianna Baggot's disappointing Pure. So obviously the marketing campaign for the new movie has done the trick!

Not that that's the point I mean to make. Bear with me a moment here, and we'll find our way back to the start. First we need to factor in a third thing: another notable dystopia. Indeed, one near and dear to many hearts.

That'd be the Uglies books, by Scott Westerfeld.

Very recently Simon & Schuster revealed "incredible" new covers for all three volumes. Actually, for three of the four... because trilogies are the in thing, I suspect, and anyway Extras occupies an odd spot in the series. But here, in any event, are the new jackets:

Utterly unremarkable, aren't they?

Which is a shame, on several fronts: in the first, because this series had some pretty damn decent covers to begin with - use your google-fu, folks - but largely because with The Hunger Games in ascendance, this might be the moment to win over a fair few new readers, and these new editions aren't going to earn any admirers.

Or are they?

As a matter of fact, I think they might.

Because Simon & Schuster's marketing department hasn't entirely missed its chance to piggyback the Uglies books on this latest wave of love for The Hunger Games. Quite the contrary: you probably can't see the text at the top of each of the images embedded above, so let's recap.

The Uglies!

Which is... well. You tell me.

I don't suppose I'm terribly offended. On behalf of the series, that is. I don't think the new jackets are going to entirely outmode the old covers, and maybe a simple message like this will bring renewed interest in Scott Westerfeld's work. Hard-earned interest, I should stress. Westerfeld's quite the writer, and I can't imagine anyone who reads the Uglies because they want something not dissimilar from The Hunger Games will go home disappointed.

Still, the idea of selling one work on the merits of another troubles me somewhat, and I want to know: what do you guys think about this sort of... referential marketing? Good, bad, or butt-ugly?

And another thing. If we extend the question out a bit, how do reviews which make such comparisons sit with you?

Let's bring things full circle with a for instance. In my review of Pure - which is here - I didn't just namecheck Suzanne Collins' sensational trilogy, I took Baggot's book to task (in part) because I felt it lacked The Hunger Games' heart, and the two texts were similar enough in every other sense that I thought it'd be disingenuous of me to omit the mention. Was that a helpful sort of shorthand, or simply lazy criticism?

Honestly, I can't quite decide myself...

So how do you folks feel about all this?

Let's talk it out in the comments! :)

A Capitol Competition: We Have Our Winners!

What a week it's been...

Well, sadly, it's almost over now. Hasn't it been fun though? We should totally do this again.

In any event, there's just one last matter to address before we draw back the curtains and dim the lights on The Hunger Games once and for all - at least until more concrete news of the inevitable film adaptations break, that is. Remember the giveaway I announced on Tuesday? Well, we have our winners.

But before we get to that, let me remind you, one last time, of the question... in question. Ahem.

"Which District of Panem does Katniss Everdeen, heroine of The Hunger Games and Mockingjay du jour, hail from?"

The correct answer - you need only have skim-read the back cover blurb of any of the books in the trilogy, or indeed my reviews thereof, to have found out - was, of course, District 12. Thanks to everyone who entered.

Now. To the lucky so-and-sos who emailed me the correct answer before the deadline for entries elapsed. These three kings will be receiving a mug, a t-shirt and a set of swanky temporary tattoos in the mail shortly:

• Cara Murphy, from Surrey;
• Michael Morton, from West Yorkshire;
• and Ken Collins, from Edinburgh.

In addition to which, we have one grand prizewinner, who goes home with all the aforementioned goodies AND a complete set of The Hunger Games trilogy itself.

Pardon me, house band. A drum roll, please?

Yes, that's much better.

The grand poobah, then, is none other than:

• 
  
  Catherine Asher, from London.

Congratulations, Catherine! In fact, congrats to all the winners! And commiserations to all the losers!

And from me, on behalf of the Capitol, adieu!

Book Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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"Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she’s made it out of the bloody arena alive, she’s still not safe. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what’s worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss’ family, not her friends, not the people of District 12."

***

For all intents and purposes, the Hunger Games are done. After thwarting the Capitol's grim Battle Royale with a declaration of love in the face of utter devastation and a threat of double suicide by poisonous berry her first time out, sparking rumbles of revolution all across Panem, the government contrived in the form of the Quarter Quell a second opportunity to be rid of troublesome District 12 resident Katniss Everdeen. But against all the odds, she pulled through again. At the close of Catching Fire, it was revealed that a number of so-called "tributes" had been working together to save Katniss and her sometime lover, Peeta, that they might act as symbols of the uprising. Would that the leaders of the revolution had thought to ask for her assent first...

When Mockingjay begins, she's having none of it. Safe for the moment in the bunkers of a secret thirteenth district, from where the rebellion is being orchestrated, Katniss has time to reflect. She's been used by the Capitol, by President Snow, by her tutor, Haymitch, and worst of all, by Peeta, who wasn't so lucky in the climax of the Quarter Quell: the oppressors have him at their mercy, and they're prepared to do whatever it takes to break the unwitting Mockingjay's spirit - and thus the backbone of revolution - once and for all. Katniss doesn't know who to trust, where to turn, what to do. And all the while, the burden of expectation weighs her down. "What they want", she intuits, "is for me to truly take on the role they designed for me... It isn't enough, what I've done in the past, defying the Capitol in the Games, providing a rallying point. I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution. The person who the districts - most of which are now openly at war with the Capitol - can count on to blaze the path to victory." But at what cost? And why has it fallen on her to lead the very people who would have happily cheered at her death in the arena only a year ago?

Eventually, inevitably, Katniss puts her qualms to one side for the greater good, but conjoined with the comprehensive catch-up the final volume of any trilogy must offer up, her doubts make the first third of Mockingjay something of a slog. Perhaps Katniss' endless indecisiveness fits with her character, but it's hard to express how frustrating it is to see her, yet again, second-guessing the very resolutions she's made (after no small amount of humm-ing and ha-ing) in the previous books, only for her to redouble her resolve a couple of chapters later, arriving back, in the end, at square one, and no further.

There's a lot going on in Mockingjay. Suzanne Collins has iterated in Panem a fascinating post-collapse society rife with conflicts infinitely richer and more relevant than those Katniss is faced with, the vast majority of which, at least initially, get short shrift next to her tiresome internal monologue. What of the districts at war with their brutal oppressors? What of the people of the Capitol itself, whose obsession with Katniss, the erstwhile girl on fire, surely clashes with their primitive understanding of the impoverished who make their lives of luxury possible? What of Peeta, Haymitch, Gale and Prim? Instead, we're stuck with Katniss - as we have been throughout the trilogy - whose isolationist perspective only detracts from the greater issues in play.

Thankfully, things pick up once Katniss has finally made up her mind to be the Mockingjay. Our experience of the uprising begins in earnest, and the fallout is truly horrific; Collins pulls no punches in the race to the jagged finish line. The body count rises exponentially... the conflicts Katniss must come to terms with grow to dwarf her directionless angst of only a handful of chapters ago... and far be it for me to spoil the fraught conclusion for those of you who haven't already gobbled it up, but everything falls apart in short order, and Collins, true to her relentlessly dystopian vision to the bittersweet end, does not see fit to put all the pieces back together in the pandering way so many young adult authors surely would.

Mockingjay is certainly a more coherent and ultimately satisfying addition to The Hunger Games than Catching Fire was. Given how far from the formula Mockingjay strays, book two of the trilogy feels, in retrospect, like little more than a rerun of Katniss' first trial, an inferior director's cut which Collins should have had the sense to let well enough alone. But neither is Mockingjay the breath of fresh air The Hunger Games was: only in the approach to the finale does Katniss actually develop as a character in any real sense, and considering that Collins has told this entire tale from her inherently limited perspective, it seems a real shame to have had her, and by extension us, tread water for so long. With such an incredible setting to exploit, such a fertile cast of supporting characters to give it depth and texture, lumbering the conclusion of the trilogy - which once promised so much - with yet another round of Katniss' exhausting self-doubt only hurts Mockingjay in the end.

It has its faults, then, just as Catching Fire and indeed - to a lesser extent - the first book in the series, but on the whole, Mockingjay makes for a fitting curtain call to The Hunger Games, which itself stands, whatever the individual failings of its three volumes, as a daring and supremely addictive instance of modern young adult literature at its pinnacle. Harry Potter and Twilight be damned: to whomsoever is keeping tabs on such matters, The Hunger Games, and pray, not they, should go down in the history books as a game-changer.

***

Mockingjay

by Suzanne Collins

August 2010, Scholastic

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IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Book Review: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

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Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /

IndieBound / The Book Depository

"Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games. She and fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol — a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

"Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she’s afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her more is that she’s not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol’s cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can’t prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying."

***

The Hunger Games was that rarest of things: a publishing sensation actually deserving of the tidal wave of hype which propelled it into the cultural consciousness. Equally, Katniss Everdeen, the eldest daughter of broken and impoverished family barely scraping by in District 12, broke with convention, proving a refreshingly unconventional heroine who eschewed many of the trappings you'd expect from such a character. She was smart, resourceful and self-aware, so when the Capitol cast Katniss into the 74th Hunger Games, an annual Battle Royale designed to keep the districts of Panem in check, she came out of the ensuing bloodbath alive - if not exactly unscathed. And for the first time in the history of the Hunger Games, she escaped the arena with company. Thanks to a Shakespearian vow of double suicide via a clutch of poisonous berries, the better to best the Capitol's murderous machinations, her sometime admirer Peeta, too, emerged intact.

The Capitol, of course, aren't too pleased with having had their own rulebook cast back at them in the dramatic finale of the last Hunger Games. Nor is Katniss, particularly. As a victor, she'll live a life of luxury, of privilege, though she'll have to tour the country on a regular basis, pretending all the while to love Peeta lest the public lose interest in her - when in fact her heart is with Gale, an old friend from District 12. Emboldened by Katniss' example, however, there are rumblings of revolution amongst the people of Panem... uprising is on everyone's lips, and the Capitol, being oppressors and all, mean to nip all the dangerous talk in the bud.

As I began by saying, The Hunger Games was great. If I had one fear about the sequel, though, it was that YA author Suzanne Collins would take the already-hackneyed formula established therein (if not decades ago) and simply rise and repeat. Catching Fire, I'll grant up front, isn't quite that. Collins introduces a few inspired elements to the mix; gives up a handful of engaging new characters to stand in for those so mercilessly slaughted in the first book; and delves deeper into the inner workings of the Capitol, a rather faceless baddie stand-in before. Regretfully, however, the larger part of Catching Fire is more of the same. First and foremost, there's another round of the Hunger Games. This time out it's the Quarter Quell, a special Hunger Games in which only previous victors can compete. Katniss and Peeta are of course pressganged into the arena, and though it's a different arena, with a neat, clockwork twist and an array of new competitors, the climactic drama therein plays out much less excitingly.

For all intents and purposes, come to that, Collins seems to be going through the motions. Catching Fire is a take two of the events of The Hunger Games right down to the tedious dress-up, courtesy of Katniss' prep team and the victory tour she must suffer through directly after emerging from the arena the first time out. There's another round of will-they/won't-they between Katniss and Peeta, after a clinch with whom the unwitting symbol of the revolution muses: "I thought I was something of an expert on hunger, but this is an entirely new kind," and not, I would add, the kind I could give a hoot about. The relationship hokey-kokey which dominates the first third of Catching Fire and pops up sporadically, not to mention lamentably thereafter is decidedly not what this series is about; it feels like a transparent attempt to foster a kind of Team Gale versus Team Peeta mentality a la Twilight... as if all this, the entirety of The Hunger Games, is at heart a romance between two childhood sweethearts and a well-intentioned interloper, which, though Catching Fire certainly underwhelms, is nevertheless to undersell Collins' accomplishment in crafting a sophisticated and engaging young adult sensation.

There's certainly another great story to be told in Panem, but Catching Fire is all about getting there, arraying the pieces about the board in preparation for Mockingjay, which one can only hope justifies the manhandling Collins resorts to in pursuit of that end. As an entity unto itself, however, book two of The Hunger Games trilogy is disappointingly flat and repetitive. It short-sells the characters, climaxes in a morass of contrivance and nonchalantly fobs off the expectations created in part the first.

But you know what? All told, I still had fun. Catching Fire is far from the equal of The Hunger Games, though it means, I suspect, to be exactly that. Notwithstanding a few minor additions, it's more of the same... the same good thing. And that's fine.

***

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

September 2009, Scholastic

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Recommended and Related Reading

A Capitol Competition: Who Wants The Hunger Games?

Well, well, well...

I've done a couple of giveaways here on TSS in the past, but none - not even, dare I say it, the signed and strictly limited proof of Nights of Villjamur author Mark Charan Newton was kind enough to donate to the cause a few months ago - none, *ahem*, approach the grandeur of the one I have for you all today. Thanks to the sweethearts over at Scholastic, I have a huge prize pack to competition off to one lucky individual. It includes:

• A complete set of The Hunger Games trilogy, ie. copies of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay;
• A Hunger Games-branded mug;
• A Hunger Games-branded t-shirt;
• A Hunger Games-branded pin badge;
• And perhaps even a couple of swanky temporary tattoos.

Tell me that lot isn't something to write home about!

In addition to the grand prizewinner, I also have a couple of packed bags of swag to give away to three - count 'em! - runners-up. Those so-and-sos will get everything from the bullet-points listed above short of the books themselves: so mugs, t-shirts, badges and tats. Not so second-rate for runners-up prizes, if you ask me.

All you have to do to stand a chance of winning is send an email to thespeculativescotsman [at] googlemail [dot] com with your name, your snail mail and your answer to the following question:

"Which District of Panem does Katniss Everdeen, heroine of The Hunger Games and Mockingjay du jour, hail from?"

And please, make sure you mark your subject headers "Hunger Games Giveaway" so entries don't get lost amid the mess of email I receive on a daily basis.

I'm afraid, given the literal weight of the prizes in question, that I'm only going to be able to accept entries from readers within the United Kingdom; apologies to all my foreign fans! I tell you, sometimes it really is better to be a Brit!

That lamentable caveat aside, I'll be accepting entries from today till Saturday, when I'll announce the winner, picked at random from the selfsame glass ball in which tributes to the Hunger Games are decided - honest, guv! :P Multiple entries will, of course, disqualify you, but so long as you don't try to game the system, you'll be grand.

That's that. What are you waiting for? Get your entries in starting... now.

Oh, and before I go: as Effie Trinket says, "May the odds... be ever in your favour!"

Book Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

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"Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. But Katniss has been clse to death before — and survival, for her, is second nature. The Hunger Games is a searing novel set in a future with unsettling parallels to our present. Welcome to the deadliest reality TV show ever..."

***

The literary zeitgeist has a way of latching onto the oddest things. Who would have thought, in the early going, that Harry Potter would become such a sensation? That the angsty bumbling of a boy wizard would enrapture the entire world? Certainly not the innumerable publishers who sent J. K. Rowling's manuscript packing, nor the critics whose decidedly so-so reviews of the first book in the series alluded not at all to its trend-setting potential. Did anyone, I wonder, have an inkling that a certain chastity parable involving a teenage girl, a handsome werewolf and a sparkly vampire would prove so successful that it stood to change the landscape of young adult fiction forever? I dare say they did not. Certainly Stephanie Meyer's cumbersome prose gave no indication that Twilight would be the next Next Big Thing.

And yet, here we are: a glut of paranormal romance, so-called, has bullied the age-old tradition of genre literature off all but the biggest bookstore's shelves. There's a new Harry Potter knock-off with grand designs on Rowling's readership every other week. At least with The Hunger Games, you can see the throughline between the initial concept and its overwhelming success. Suzanne Collins' series is a riff on reality television, itself something of a modern cultural touchstone. In particular, The Hunger Games is a speculative bent on the late and not-at-all lamented Big Brother, in which Collins conjures up a post-collapse society whose overlords keep the impoverished people in check (and so stave off any potential rebellion) by insisting that each year, their children must fight for their very lives in the titular competition.

Katniss Everdeen is one such subject. Sixteen years old, she's a hunter, particularly at home with a bow and a quiver of arrows in the wilderness beyond District 12. She's also the sole breadwinner for her poor family, including her mother, a bereaved medicine woman, and her little sister Prim. When at the annual Reaping, where those children who will compete in the hunger games - "tributes," the Capitol has it - are drawn from a great glass ball, Prim's name is called out, Katniss volunteers to take her place. It's as good as a death sentence: of the 24 tributes, composed of a girl and a boy from each of the 12 segregated Districts, only one will live to tell the tale. In the arena, it's a case of kill or be killed while all of Panem watches, and though Katniss is determined to triumph over the other children, she'll have to pay a high price indeed if she hopes to survive.

So. The Hunger Games is Battle Royale, basically, or The Running Man with teenagers in Schwartzenegger's stead. Going in, given that rather uninspired synopsis and the hallmark of mediocrity with which the likes of Meyer and Rowling have belaboured YA literature, I'd expected at best functional prose, a pandering plot and cardboard characters - the better to relate to as large a segment of the presumed audience as possible. Imagine my surprise, then, to see that Collins has crafted the most sophisticated and engaging all-ages sensation in decades. The Hunger Games mightn't be particularly original, but it's wonderfully done. Better written than any of the Harry Potter novels, bar none, and a huge improvement, needless to say, on the low bar Twlight and its ill-executed ilk have set.

Collins' expertise shines through The Hunger Games from prose to pace to plot - predictable though that lattermost may be - but beyond its technical proficiency, what truly sets this novel apart is its acute sense of awareness. Some of the Big Brother references are a bit much, I'll say; the live reaction to the final eviction (by evisceration), for instance, is an over-egging of the allegorical pudding. Otherwise, Collins plays her hand perfectly. Katniss' awareness of the audience watching her every move also works to accommodate a metatextual awareness of us, of the reader. Katniss has seen the hunger games in the past - in Panem, it's the only time of the year when the Districts can be assured of a reliable power supply - and so she understands our expectations inasmuch as she graps what the voyeuristic viewer wants from her. And she plays with them throughout the competition. Her romance with Peeta, a baker's son head over heels in love with her, begins as a calculated thing, strictly for the audience's benefit. Katniss smiles for the invisible, omnipresent cameras at appropriate moments, behaves in such a way as to play on our sympathies, to win our admiration or our pity. She puts on a show; she is as performative as characters come.

There is, too, a maturity to The Hunger Games that seems tantamount to a declaration of war on young adult literature as we know it. Collins does not skirt around the conflict inherent in the competition at the dark heart of her dystopian narrative: she has Katniss deal with death and devastation from up close, and though she pitches casual brutality, she treats the actual fact of the first-hand horrors Collins' thoughtful protagonist must face down of herself fall victim to with grace and good sense - never more so than with regards to Rue, the youngest of all the tributes, a twelve year old girl from a District which sounds by all rights worse even than Katniss' own, where the poor are routinely found dead from starvation or cold. Her ultimate fate in the games is as good as a foregone conclusion, as it is with all the other so-called contestants - not excluding Katniss - and Collins paints her perfectly, with a delicate brush rather than the broad and obvious strokes so many all-ages authors would surely condescend to.

At the close of The Hunger Games, the curtains have come down on the grim competition Collins' novel is named after. There are two more books to come before the trilogy's done, and it remains to be seen what the author will do with the world she's dreamed up. We've only seen a fraction of it, after all: the larger part of this first chapter is set in an area purpose-built for the tributes to duke it out in, and the sense we have of what's outwith those walls is impressionistic at best. Collins could simply repeat herself, have book two revolve around another hunger games, though I dearly hope she has a grander plan for the characters and concepts iterated on herein. In the end, only time will tell. One thing's for sure, however: The Hunger Games is a fantastic novel. Relentlessly pacey, character-driven and pitch perfect, it'll leave you - dare I say it? - hungry for more.

***

The Hunger Games

by Suzanne Collins

September 2008, Scholastic

Buy this book from
Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com /
IndieBound / The Book Depository

Recommended and Related Reading

Let The Hunger Games Begin!

Here on the blog and from time to time on Twitter, I've bumbled in brief about The Hunger Games. To be perfectly frank, I don't read a lot of young adult literature - not because I'm averse to the form at all, you must understand, but because it can be pretty tough to separate the genuinely good from the zeitgeist-grabbers along the lines of Twilight. Nevertheless, I couldn't help but sit up and take notice of the frenzy that met the release of the last volume of Suzanne Collins' tremendously successful YA trilogy late last month. As much to satisfy my curiosity as anything else, I got a hold of a copy of the first book in the series... and I haven't looked back since.

The more attentive among you might have wondered when in heck I'd get around to writing up something more substantial than the intermittent 140 character installments following my progress through The Hunger Games. Well, this week is when. In fact, this whole week. From today through Friday, I'll be posting full reviews of all three novels in the trilogy, I've news of a tremendously exciting giveaway to share - more on which tomorrow - and there might just be another... thing. We'll see!

In any event, whether you're a devoted Katniss fan or a YA hater, irrespective of whether you've all three lovingly dog-eared novels on your bookshelves or you've idly wondered if apparent child's play such as The Hunger Games is for you, I like to think there'll be something for everyone on The Speculative Scotsman this week.

Be warned, however. At all times I do my best to avoid spoilers - half the fun of reading or hearing a story is the palpable sense of discovery that accompanies the journey, and who am I to take that away from you? - but particularly in my reviews of Catching Fire and Mockingjay, given that they're sequels which directly follow on from the events of the previous books, there's some stuff you may want to avert your eyes from if you mean to read The Hunger Games in the not-too-distant. Not that I'm giving away much more than the plot synopses do.

With that caveat, then...

...let the games begin!

Wishing You A...