A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
Sunrise on the Reaping
Suzanne Collins
NOTE: I’m assuming a fairly intermediate level of familiarity with the Hunger Games world, history, and general story. If the names and vocabulary are confusing, Google is your friend.
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers for pretty much the entire series. Other reviews in this series can be found here.
My first thought every time a new Hunger Games book is announced: “Are you fucking kidding me.” My second thought: “When is it coming out.” My third thought: “Maybe I should preorder it.” And then I do. A cash grab is a cash grab is a cash grab and I cannot pretend otherwise, but that doesn’t mean I won’t fall for it. (Don’t fucking come for me. If it were solely about the political principles, there wouldn’t already be a movie lined up. You could argue that the movie will bring the general message to a broader audience, but, frankly, the movies aren’t that deep, and I’m not buying it. Plus, I may be deeply jaded, but I still gave the book the full five stars, and I meant it too.) And I’ve gotta say, this is much more like it. This is the prequel we deserved, not that weird folk musicky interlude that tried to convince us that President Snow is a person too. I’ve read Ballad more times than I care to admit and I really do love the music, especially now that the accompanying movie has provided a soundtrack, but I can’t say I’m totally onboard with Suzanne’s recent turn into songfic – less prominent in this book than it was in the last, but still quite present.
Given the relative newness of the book, this seems like a good place to insert a final warning. I am not kidding when I say I’m about to go full Wikipedia on the entire book. Again, I. AM. GOING. TO. REVEAL. THE. ENDING. If you haven’t read the book, but are planning to; if you haven’t read the book and are unfamiliar with Catching Fire; if you don’t want to know every single thing that happens to Haymitch during the course of this book; you need to stop reading right now. If you skip this warning and get spoiled against your will, that is your own stupid fault, and I have zero sympathy. You should’ve listened to me when you had the chance. Dissenting opinions will get deleted and profane tantrums will get marked as spam, so don’t even bother commenting if you don’t like it.
Got it? The spoilers are starting now, okay? One final chance to turn back if you don’t want to know everything. Do you believe me yet?
.
.
.
Okay, we’re officially in “told you so” territory. We are in Panem, specifically District 12, forty years to the day after Lucy Gray Baird was reaped for the 10th annual Hunger Games. In the four decades since her victory, the Games have evolved into an elaborate murder pageant under the supervision of President Coriolanus Snow, now 58 and still almost comically bitter about absolutely everything involving District 12, from the mockingjays to the surviving Covey to the homey aphorisms (his words) used by the good people of 12. Lucy Gray has been so effectively erased that no one remembers her, and the most anyone knows is that some girl from 12 once won the Games, though they know nothing else about her. Thus, she is still somewhat present in the mind of a young Haymitch Abernathy as he wakes up on the morning of his sixteenth birthday, which also unfortunately happens to be the day of the reaping. Today’s reaping is expected to be particularly awful because of the Quarter Quell, an event that takes place every twenty-five years. The fiftieth year of the Games marks the second Quarter Quell, in which twice as many tributes – two girls and two boys from each District – are to be sent into the arena, supposedly in memory of the number of rebels who died during the war.
Despite the ominous birthday, Haymitch is still a normal sixteen-year-old Seam kid, and he has other stuff on his mind. He has been working part-time for Hattie Meeney, who brews white liquor under the table, and he is also dating Lenore Dove Baird, daughter of a Covey woman – presumably Maude Ivory – who died in childbirth and an unnamed father who seems to have come from the same clan that produced Arlo Chance, a rebel who was hanged forty years ago. Her Chance heritage has given Lenore Dove an angry, rebellious streak that manifests in various ways, many of which have gotten her in trouble with the law, to the dismay of her uncles, Clerk Carmine Clade and Tam Amber (no last name; he is a lost soul). Despite her rebellions, which include singing songs that could be interpreted as violence-inciting and spray-painting oppositional slogans on various flat surfaces, she has a softer side: she has raised a flock of geese who are devoted to her, and she and Haymitch love each other like all-fire, though her uncles are stoutly opposed to him and are not subtle in their opinion that Lenore Dove can do better. Nevertheless, Haymitch and Lenore Dove promise each other that they will spend the afternoon together before they head down to the reaping.
As it happens, Haymitch is not officially reaped for the Games, but the reaping unexpectedly descends into violent chaos when tribute Woodbine Chance tries to run for it and gets his head blown off. In the messy aftermath of his death, Haymitch is personally reaped by District 12 escort Drusilla Sickle, a spiteful harpy if I ever saw one. This is deeply illegal, but it’s the Capitol and an illegal reaping is the least of their crimes, so nobody cares. Drusilla in her wrath very nearly bundles Haymitch onto the train immediately after the reaping, but he is allowed to say goodbye to his mother and his ten-year-old brother, Sid, after a timely intervention from a young Plutarch Heavensbee, who convinces Drusilla that it might be worthwhile to capture their reaction on film. After a painful filming session, Haymitch is finally packed onto the train with no token of his home except his final birthday present, a double-headed flint striker designed by Lenore Dove and crafted by Tam Amber. With the Hunger Games finally, officially underway, he is shipped off to the Capitol along with his fellow tributes: Wyatt Callow, a compulsive oddsmaker and a son of the Booker Boys, a deeply despised gambling ring; Louella McCoy, a thirteen-year-old firecracker who has been like a sister to Haymitch; and Maysilee Donner, daughter of the sweetshop owners and the original owner of the gold mockingjay pin that will later go back into the arena for the 74th Hunger Games. In the absence of any District 12 mentors, they are all mentored by Wiress and Mags Flanagan, former victors from Districts 3 and 4.
Haymitch is initially wary of Wyatt and Maysilee, but quickly agrees to ally with Louella, whom he affectionately calls “sweetheart”; however, all plans go up in smoke when Louella dies before the Games even begin. After a sinister meeting with President Snow, Louella is replaced with a mind-wiped lookalike, both to maintain the illusion that District 12 still has four living tributes and to plant a spy in their midst. Unable to refer to her as “Louella,” the kids dub her “Lou Lou,” and actually end up trying to protect her quite a bit, even knowing that she’s packing some pretty hefty spy gear. To make matters worse, Drusilla hates all their guts and is barely willing to work with them, and their stylist, reptile-obsessed Magno Stift, is generally absent because he’s more interested in licking toads. (I wish that were a joke.) The incompetence of their team reduces the District 12 tributes’ odds of receiving sponsor gifts in the arena, but their luck takes a turn for the better when Magno is unofficially replaced by Effie Trinket, older sister of one of Haymitch’s oblivious prep team members. Though she’s swallowed the Capitol’s pro-Hunger Games propaganda without protest, Effie is actually competent, and her efforts make the kids more attractive to prospective donors.
In the run-up to the Games, Haymitch is approached by Ampert, twelve-year-old son of former District 3 victor Beetee Latier, who persuades him and the rest of his team to join forces with District 3 in an anti-Career pack. Thanks to Ampert’s work, the pack swells to include several other Districts before the Games officially begin. Known as the Newcomers, Ampert’s pack presents a united, intelligent front during the tribute interviews, garnering even more sponsor support. Meanwhile, Beetee himself – forced to mentor his own son as punishment for an earlier act of rebellion – speaks to Haymitch directly, and convinces him to team up with Ampert to break the Hunger Games arena. Wanting his own expected death to mean something, Haymitch agrees to Beetee’s plan and splits from the Newcomers before they are all transported to an arena of breathtaking beauty. Of course, it is still a Hunger Games arena, so everything from the fruit in the trees to the water in the streams is poisoned, to say nothing of the vast range of extremely dangerous muttations running all over the place. (There literally are taser-packing butterflies, because despite the name the Gamemakers don’t play.)
The Games start out slowly for Haymitch, who manages to grab a pack of supplies and a weapon from the Cornucopia before fleeing north to enact Beetee’s plan; however, Wyatt dies in the initial bloodbath, as do several other Newcomers. After a brief stint with Lou Lou, cut short by her death at the hands of a fatally toxic clump of bee balm, Haymitch reunites with Ampert, and together they manage to cause some damage to the arena, though the exact amount is unclear when the arena remains functional. Their defiance comes at a ghastly cost: while Haymitch struggles to return from the arena’s sub-levels, Ampert is attacked by golden squirrel mutts who strip him down to the skeleton in minutes. Shortly after his death, the volcano in the corner of the arena erupts, wiping out a good chunk of the remaining tributes. As the Games continue and the number of tributes dwindles, Haymitch teams up with Maysilee, who turns out to be proficient with poisoned darts. Though Maysilee wants to find any remaining Newcomers, Haymitch – still wanting to hurt the Capitol in some way – becomes obsessed with finding and destroying the arena’s backup generator. His search leads them to find the generator at the very edge of the arena, but it is completely unreachable and protected by a forcefield that reflects all projectiles.
Eventually, of course, Haymitch and Maysilee run afoul of the two remaining Careers, Silka Sharp of District 1 and Maritte of District 4, but their showdown is interrupted by the appearance of three low-level Gamemakers tasked with cleaning up the arena (which for some reason has to take place during the Games, which seems weird to me, but okay). Maysilee and Maritte briefly unite in needlessly killing the Gamemakers, but are then punished severely: Maysilee is killed by a flock of candy-pink birds specifically programmed to attack her, while Maritte is eaten alive by the golden squirrels. With almost nothing left to live for and no way to damage the generator, Haymitch decides to find and protect Wellie, the sole remaining District 6 tribute and the final member of the Newcomers, wanting to see her become the Hunger Games victor over the Capitol-groomed Silka. Despite his best efforts, Wellie is beheaded by Silka, who by this point just wants to go home. Furious and grieving, Haymitch challenges Silka to single combat. After a vicious fight, a mortally wounded Haymitch lures Silka to the edge of the arena, near the generator, and manages to indirectly kill her when her own axe bounces off the generator’s shield and buries itself in her head. Though the Gamemakers try to crown him the victor, Haymitch remembers at the last minute that he still has enough explosive materials to make a bomb. He ignites this bomb with his flint striker and throws it onto the generator during what he believes are his dying moments, and assumes he is done.
Unfortunately, nothing is that easy, and Haymitch is efficiently brought back from the brink of death. After an extended period of convalescence/house arrest, he is groomed by his team – which now officially includes Effie – and trotted around the Capitol as the victor of the 50th Hunger Games. His reunion with Mags and Wiress is painful, as it is immediately obvious that both were extensively tortured for his actions. During his post-Games interview and viewing, he learns that the footage from the Games has been edited so severely as to cast him as a selfish loner, a jackass who ran off on his allies without a second thought. Now terrified at what he has done, Haymitch attempts to gain Snow’s good graces by playing along with the victory celebrations to an intensely humiliating degree, but retribution still lies in wait: he returns to District 12 to find his house on fire and his mother and Sid already beyond rescue, and his joyful reunion with Lenore Dove turns to horror when he unwittingly feeds her poisoned gumdrops planted by Snow. Having lost everyone he loved, he drives his remaining friends away, knowing they will not be safe if they spend too much time with him. A visit to the Covey’s secret graveyard, where he buries the flint striker with Lenore Dove, does not help; the nightmares get so bad that he starts sleeping with a knife in his hand. Plutarch tries to recruit him for future seditious efforts, but Haymitch ignores his invitation and instead turns down a long path of grief, self-loathing, and white liquor.
Eight years later, Katniss Everdeen is born to Burdock and Asterid Everdeen. Eleven years after that, Burdock dies in a mine explosion, and Haymitch watches from a distance as Katniss – tough and smart and with her hair braided so like Louella’s that he starts calling her “sweetheart” after she volunteers for the 74th Hunger Games – grows up hunting in the woods and trading her goods in the Hob, wearing her father’s leather jacket. When all is said and done, when Snow is dead and the Hunger Games are no more than a bad memory, Haymitch finally tells Katniss and Peeta his story and Lenore Dove’s story and Maysilee’s story and more, the stories of everyone he knew. After hearing these stories, Katniss brings him a basketful of goose eggs to be hatched (even though she then feeds him roast goose for dinner – she’s a complicated person), and he ends up with a loving flock of geese imprinted on him, much as Lenore Dove once had. His ending isn’t exactly cheerful, as his liver is in trouble and he knows it, but he notes that he and Lenore Dove mated for life – much like their geese – and that he still loves her like all-fire.
Knowing the ending did not help. To say I was very unwell after finishing this book would be a gross understatement. The skeleton of Haymitch’s Games is outlined in Catching Fire, in which Katniss and Peeta watch the recording shortly prior to the third Quarter Quell, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. And I’m glad that it doesn’t, because the official explanation for the murder of Haymitch’s entire family has never sat right with me. I had kind of forgotten that the Capitol heavily edits every Games recap, and after the original trilogy the only explanation we had for the Abernathy slaughter is that Haymitch weaponized the arena and the Capitol was embarrassed because he made them look stupid. I wouldn’t put that level of pettiness past them, but it still seemed like a weak excuse to wipe an entire family off the map. Now, though, it makes far more sense, much as I hate it. I knew what would happen, but it was so sweetly poignant to spend time with this younger Haymitch, the good son, the loving brother, the affectionate boyfriend, that I spent much of the time wanting Collins to go rogue and completely retcon the ending.
At the same time I don’t mean that, not really, because Collins has been meticulous in maintaining continuity between the five Hunger Games books. I am so glad she hasn’t succumbed to the temptation to follow the example of the Star Wars prequels, which went so crazy with the world-building that the technology in the past ended up being better than the technology in the future (i.e., the original trilogy). The evolution of the Games has been intelligently handled: they’ve come a long way in the last forty years, but they haven’t yet reached the level of seamless efficiency that marks the 74th and 75th Hunger Games, and the bugs haven’t quite been ironed out. Some things are completely different: the individual sessions with the Gamemakers, in which the tributes are assigned training scores, in this iteration are formatted as an interview rather than a demonstration of skill. Many critical pre-Games tasks are handled by incompetent bureaucrats, which causes a number of irreversible problems, among them Louella’s death. The tributes now have a team of handlers who take care of them (er, more or less if we discount Drusilla and Magno), but this is apparently new enough that there are still people who remember when the tributes used to be shoved into cattle cars without food or water, as they were during the 10th Hunger Games, and the staff who come into contact with the tributes expect some measure of gratitude for basic things like real beds and bathrooms. We’re not yet at the point where everyone just takes it for granted that the tributes will be treated like celebrities; the amenities are fairly spartan, and the food is far simpler and less plentiful than it is by the time Katniss and Peeta travel to their first Games.
It was also nice to see that at least some of the Covey survived; even Lucy Gray hasn’t been entirely forgotten, and in fact her songs are referenced multiple times throughout the book. During his house arrest, Haymitch is forced to watch an endless cycle of old Hunger Games clips, which does actually include Lucy Gray’s interview, in which a young Snow can briefly be seen right after her revenge ballad. I’m not sure why Snow would choose to show this particular clip: presumably the choice was his, because there is only supposed to be one copy of the 10th Games, and that copy is most likely in Snow’s hands. Maybe he’s less concerned about publicity, now that everyone involved in those Games – with the exception of himself – is probably either dead or old enough to have forgotten much of what happened. Maybe he just wanted to twist the knife by taunting Haymitch with the image of another Covey girl, so hauntingly similar to Lenore Dove; maybe he wanted to reinforce his earlier warning that Covey girls will stab you with a song the minute your back is turned. Certainly Haymitch isn’t in a hurry to run out and publish a detailed exposé of Snow’s forty-year-old affair with his own tribute, so I suppose a little harmless mockery wouldn’t have seemed amiss.
Despite these oblique tauntings, young Haymitch remains consistently entertaining company, so sharp and so funny (and yet in some respects still just a straw-headed bozo who regularly falls for the Donners’ chewy marshmallow trick), definitely not above spontaneously drinking a jug of milk out of pure spite, always cracking self-deprecating jokes and looking out for the stray little ones who collect around him like lost doves, as he calls them. Thanks to Haymitch (and Maysilee – let’s give credit where credit is due), the District 1 Careers will forever be “those snot green tributes” in my head. Though both his story and Katniss’s story are told in the same style, their voices are so distinct that I could never confuse one for the other. I loved seeing the difference in their approaches to the Games: both fully expect to die, as would anyone with sense, but where Katniss insists on total isolation and self-sufficiency, Haymitch readily embraces his fellow non-Careers and even manages to convince Districts 6 and 9 to join the Newcomers. Katniss is terrified of causing trouble, which she knows will redound upon her family if she takes it too far; Haymitch figures it doesn’t matter as long as he dies first, so he just goes for broke. I also love Lenore Dove, and of course I looooooove Maysilee, who insists on eating every meal in the arena with a makeshift knife and fork (except one time when she’s really pissed) and slaps Drusilla’s stupid face almost upon first acquaintance. Drusilla is a character with absolutely no redeeming features and she’s not shy about this lack, but she is occasionally hilarious, especially when I found out that she is Magno’s extremely bitter still-legal-but-not-really-committed wife. I mean, yeah, I kinda get it now. I’d be bitter too if that’s what I had for a husband.
But the best part of the book – and the reason Sunrise succeeds as a prequel, while Ballad remains unconvincing – is the raft of characters who will later become a part of Katniss’s story. Ballad spent too much time trying to explain why Katniss was a weapon specifically crafted to unstitch Snow and his bloody machinations, and in the end it didn’t feel like a genuine prequel because it read too much like a puzzle that was made to fit one piece. Sunrise, by comparison, feels like coming home. It was nice seeing so many familiar names popping up: Abernathy, Donner, Everdeen, Mellark. It was lovely to see baby Katniss’s relationship with Burdock, who was so proud of her that he took her everywhere he went. I loved seeing Wiress and Beetee and especially Mags, though it was terrible to realize that the Wiress who appears in Catching Fire was shaped by the tortures performed on her in this book. I was even pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Plutarch, who has been plotting Snow’s overthrow far longer than I realized. (Also, thanks to the movies, I will forever picture him as Philip Seymour Hoffman, no matter how old he is.) I don’t like him and I can see why Haymitch and Katniss don’t trust him, but he plays his part, which is more than we can say for his relative Hilarius, otherwise known as Snow’s whiniest high school classmate. Unfortunately, Sunrise does take a slight cue from Ballad, in that it frequently interjects snippets of “The Raven,” from which Lenore Dove’s name is derived, and I have to admit I skipped over Haymitch’s endless recitations at the end because I am a philistine and there were too many interruptions from the text that I actually wanted to read.
When I watched the Ballad movie, I noted how ready we as an audience are to embrace the next Games, the next tributes, the next deaths. That remains a disturbing side effect of the series in general and I cannot deny it, but it didn’t bother me in this book, perhaps because Haymitch spends so much time isolated from the main happenings of the Games. Thus, while there are moments of incredible violence, most of the deaths in these Games take place out of Haymitch’s sight, and therefore out of ours as well. This isn’t to downplay the televised deaths of almost fifty children, but it does keep the book from dipping into spectator-gratifying violence. The upcoming movie is going to show a punched-up version of the Games because that’s what they always do and I know it, but the books at least are clear in their mission: to tell the story of the Games’ downfall, not their success. This doesn’t fix my primary objection, which is that we are in fact a world of Capitols, but it helps. Given the current happenings in our actual world, I almost wonder what Collins would do with the original trilogy now, if the books had been written in sequence. But maybe she wouldn’t have to change a thing, and everything would proceed as it already has.
Either way, I am glad that we had this chance to hear Haymitch’s story in his own words, though it is largely a story of Haymitch struggling to protect his loved ones and arriving just slightly too late every single time. Under those circumstances, I can easily see why he would give up so completely during the years that will now follow. It was so profoundly sad to watch his descent into addiction and grief, even having known what he becomes over the next quarter century. I wouldn’t say Katniss is ever deliberately hurtful, but she certainly doesn’t mince words, and she makes no secret of Haymitch’s alcoholism. I would have thought this would armor me against the ending, but in fact it had the opposite effect: that foreknowledge made it more painful to see him so young and full of beans (both literally and figuratively – he eats a lot of bean and ham hock soup in this book), so devoted to his tiny family, so in love with his girlfriend, so ready to end the Games for good. It was hard knowing that the next few weeks would completely strip him of all joy and hope and ambition. I am hoping this will make for a stronger payoff in the original trilogy, where he sobers up enough to help with the final rebellion, but it’s going to take him a long time to get there.
