Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins Series: Hunger Games #0.5
Published by Scholastic Inc. on March 18, 2025
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories, Young Adult Fiction / Dystopian
Pages: 400
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 9781546171478When you've been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?
As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.
Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.
When Haymitch's name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He's torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who's nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he's been set up to fail. But there's something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.
Sometimes we want more books in a series but don’t necessarily need them, having the original series stand on it’s own is enough. The original Hunger Games trilogy is such a series. The first three books were so great and poignant that adding more just takes away from the original series.
To start off, I (obviously) love the original three books. They were a perfect exploration of dystopian literature and how war and trauma affects those afterwards. Sunrise on the Reaping was….not that. I’m still not completely sure what the point of the novel was (from Collins perspective). At the sentence level, it felt like getting hit over the head by a piano but overall, I was left wondering what was the point of this book. Especially with how we have so many characters from the original trilogy in the book to help Haymitch, but we already know nothing happens for 24 years. Collins keeps telling us in this one and in TBOSAS that there are people who question or oppose the games and yet, we are static in changing anything between the 10th and 50th Games and then again between the 50th and 74th Games. The only thing that seems to change is the pageantry of the games.
Yes, I hear everyone saying it’s about the propaganda machine and how the Capitol manipulates things. Believe me that was made perfectly clear to me! It’s also clear to me that us, as the audience, fell into being spectators too as we not only read these books about kids killing kids but believed the story the Capitol trotted out about Haymitch’s games. With the David Hume quotes at the beginning, along with her mentioning her and her dad talking about Hume, I’m guessing she wants us to think about implicit submission. But that’s hard to get across when the character who is telling that is an adult man who has suffered no repercussions to a 16 year old boy who is about to go into the arena and either kill or be killed and then at the end when the same boy has lost literally everything, he repeats that same sentiment! This version of Plutarch has really soured by view of the Plutarch from the original series.
The idea that this is supposed to be about propaganda and how people are so willing to submit to rulers rings a bit false when it doesn’t match up with what we’ve already read. We find out during the reaping there is a time delay, which allows them to cover up the murder of the second boy tribute. So, why wasn’t this done with Katniss? I guess surprise that there was a volunteer, and they didn’t know what to do. But again, we find out at the end of SOTR that the whole games as been rearranged and things don’t happen in the order they did and people are not there when they are and just a lot of manipulation and editing to make Haymitch out to be a loner and only looking out for himself. They erase the flooding of Sub-A, the killing of gamekeepers, and the reason for Haymitch finding the boundary (the generator). Again, why wasn’t this done with the 74th Games? Why was Peeta and Katniss’s double suicide attempt even aired? The logical conclusion that I can think of is that during the 24 years between the 50th games and the 74th games they changed the format. With SOTR, the games were filmed “live” and then edited and sent out once the victor is crowned. In the Hunger Games, they’ve changed the format where everything is live, and they can pick and chose where cameras go but that’s it, more like how sport games are aired. But that makes no sense for how brilliant Snow supposedly is to take the chance to have less control on something like this seems out of character. It just doesn’t add up, which is the case for much of this prequel.
To actually go back to the beginning of the book now, I really get annoyed when sequels have the need to repeat information we already know. Let’s be honest, the people who are reading Sunrise on the Reaping are going to be those who read the Hunger Games already and probably already read The Ballad of Songbird and Snake. Most people aren’t coming into this blind. I don’t need a recap of what the Games are or the Dark Days or the war. Another issue with prequels is the want to see the connections to the previous (future) books. There was so much time spent on name dropping people and repeating information that we already knew that I just didn’t get a feel for Haymitch’s character, which was completely different from The Hunger Games and Katniss.
Speaking of Haymitch’s character, I didn’t feel like there was a fleshed out character. He was stuck between who he is when we first meet him in The Hunger Games and who he becomes throughout the series. Neither of which is helpful to who he is now, living in 12, and being a tribute for the hunger games. I actually felt a lot of the characters were very flat, except for Maysilee (who I absolutely adored). The characterization of some of them in itself didn’t make a lot of sense either. The scene where Snow threatens Haymitch felt more like a man starting off his career and panicking than someone who’s been president for a while. Then in the end, he maneuvers everything in a way to destroy Haymitch’s life and make it look like accidents. This felt like two completely different characters. That seems to be a theme with the prequels is just pale imitations of the original characters.
I stand by my thoughts that prequels are lovely in theory but in execution must be handled with care or else you leave more plot holes and retcons in your wake.
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