Hungry for a story that catches fire

One of the most important golden rules of life is that patience is a virtue. Wait your turn. Pass the marshmallow test. Sit in an uncomfortable plastic chair at the clinic waiting for the nurse to call your name. Suffer through the first few introductory chapters of a book to get to the action.

I admit I am not the most patient person in the world. I have never passed a marshmallow test in my life. Without reading material or music, I wouldn’t last through the eternity hospitals take to process a simple check-up.

When it comes to entertainment — shows, movies, books, and even songs — if the beginning bores me, I will most probably never reach the end.

This is almost what happened with The Hunger Games, a novel by Suzanne Collins. I did not want to read it after the first chapter.

Filled with people plagued by poverty and an oppressive government, the start of the book presented a reality that is too close to the one faced by people in other parts of the world (including our own), a reality of pain, repression, and hopelessness — a reality that I wanted to escape.

The months dragged on and I still had not even read through a fourth of the book. I wanted to give up on it, but my folks pushed me to continue.

I’m glad they did. I never would have discovered this gem of a book if it weren’t for their dogged reminder that I finish it. Like a diesel engine, it took a while to get the story hot, but once it did, it burned like wildfire, and I couldn’t burn through the pages fast enough.

The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen, a poor girl from a small district in the world of Panem.

Every year, a fictional reality show (how’s that for an oxymoron?) is held at the Capitol, the seat of Panem’s manipulative and tyrannical government. Called the Hunger Games, the show randomly picks two children, one boy and one girl, each of Panem’s 12 districts. These kids are then forcibly sent to fight to the death. Only one child can survive.

The Games are a very cruel and morbid version of Pinoy Big Brother. There must always be someone voted off, but inside the arena, voting off means offing them. The Survivor reality TV series has nothing on these “games.”

I could recount the whole story here; it has left such a lasting impression in my mind. But, I don’t want to ruin the suspense that kept me turning pages in the middle of the night (that is, once I got through the introduction).

Short of being a spoiler, I will reveal that there is a love angle here, reminiscent of Twilight. But that is where the similarity ends. Stephenie Meyer loves this series, and I do hope that she decides to take a page from Suzanne Collins’ book and learn that there is more to life than a love story.

In The Hunger Games, the romance angle takes a backseat to make room for a more substantial plotline that touches on many different topics ranging from human nature in the face of crisis, to the disparity between the so-called civilized elite and the “barbaric” poor, and even dwells on the power of the media.

The story is not predictable at all; it seems like Suzanne Collins made all the unexpected, tyrannical decisions an author could make in a novel. From beginning to end, the story will keep readers guessing.

Characters are perplexing. It is difficult to choose who to love or hate because all of them seem to be changing all the time, a bit like Harry Potter’s Professor Severus Snape, who also kept Potter fans guessing where his true loyalties lay. With each death in the Games, it becomes harder not to feel sad for those who had to die.

The book’s sequel, Catching Fire maintains the fastball pace started in the first book. It is even more difficult to predict what happens in this novel. There were so many surprising twists that made the tale so engaging. As the old cliché goes, the plot thickens.

Collins manipulates her characters and her narrative seamlessly and writes so well that a clear picture of what is happening is easy to imagine. At times, imagining the trials that the characters go through is not a pretty sight. The author is not shy about mentioning torn body parts and blood.

Both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire would lend themselves well to the silver screen (toned down violence, of course, for that coveted PG 13 rating).

Seeing the book come to life would be a treat, but I highly recommend you go out and read Collins’ work first before hearing her words come out of some actor’s mouth.

There are so many subtleties, little human moments in the books that would be lost in all the special effects, lights, glitz, and glamour of a movie.

Since The Hunger Games is reportedly already being made into a blockbuster, I can only hope that it doesn’t get ridiculed the way Twilight was (Blade killing Edward. Hahaha. Very funny). It deserves something better than that.

Unfortunately, Collins is a master of the art of cliffhanging. And she has left a large one at the end of Catching Fire.

If I thought that going through the heart-wrenching scenes at the start of the series was a test of patience, then I am in for a torturous few months.

After tearing through the first two novels of this trilogy, I now face a completely different and much more challenging test of patience: waiting for the third book, which is set to be released on Aug. 24. It’s going to be a long eight months.

The Hunger Games and Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins are available at major bookstores nationwide.