Sunrise on the Reaping
By Em Kiefer
Many of you likely remember the craze The Hunger Games had on pop culture and teen fiction in the 2010s. Well, as of March of last year, many fans re-entered the world of The Hunger Games with Suzanne Collins’ newest installment of the series, Sunrise on the Reaping. Her newest novel joins The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, her previous work, as prequels to the original trilogy.
Sunrise on the Reaping is reminiscent of Catching Fire, with a new kind of terror that I hadn’t thought possible in the horror-heavy world Collins previously crafted.
This novel follows Haymitch Abernathy, who many will remember from the original trilogy as Katniss and Peeta’s District 12 mentor who aided their victory in the games from afar. In these original books, he’s known as a wildcard drunkard who is, at best, unreliable and friendless. In “Sunrise on the Reaping,” however, we open on his sixteenth birthday, which also happens to be the yearly reaping day where two children, one boy and one girl ages 12-18, are chosen from each of the twelve districts to compete in the Hunger Games.
The Haymitch we open on is as happy as a kid can be while living in the poorest district in Panem on reaping day, with several close friends and a girlfriend he’s desperately in love with. Our immediate question is, how does this Haymitch in Sunrise on the Reaping transform into the bitter and lonely man we see in the later timeline?
Our question soon begins to be answered as he is unjustly chosen in this year’s reaping, which also has double the amount of tributes due to the special nature of it being the 50th annual Hunger Games. Now one boy out of 47 other children intent on survival, Haymitch is thrust into a deceptively beautiful arena with one goal: to do something to make the Capitol hurt. There can be no more Hunger Games, and Haymitch is determined to ensure that the sun never rises on a reaping day again.
Incredibly written, with many takes on relevant themes like the power of propaganda, with Collins remarking that everyone is complicit in propaganda and it is an extremely difficult thing to break out of. Not to spoil the ending, but Haymitch’s journey is nothing short of devastating, and it is very likely that you may shed some tears (or sobs) while finishing up the book.
Collins’s newest novel sheds some much-needed light on the background of one of the point characters from the original trilogy, and reading it prompted me to go back and re-consume the trilogy with my newfound context. The book is also being adapted into a feature film releasing this November, which I am both enthusiastic and entirely terrified to see.
I highly recommend this book, just as I highly encourage you to have a box of tissues close by while divulging. [Jane, can you ask Em if she means “indulging” here?]
