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A prequel of pain and punishment in Panem, Sunrise on the Reaping brings the blood, brutality, and betrayal of the Capitol’s games back for another thrilling and utterly chilling edition of Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games series. Haymitch has always been my favorite and so I had high hopes for this installment. Dear Suzanne Collins, you delivered and more. Collin’s series signature critiques of propaganda, oppression and rule by fear and force come screaming through this novel where winning isn’t surviving. it’s just a different way to die.�� Set about 40 years after the events of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes yet with 24 years still to come before Katniss first steps into the arena in The Hunger Games, Sunrise unveils the tale of Haymitch Abernathy as he is plunged into a fight for his life in the 50th Hunger Games. The return of familiar characters from a new vantage point—Haymitch is 16 and ��not a drinker�� at the outset of this novel—allows even stories we thought we knew a chance to reveal that Katniss and the reader’s knowledge of the past was largely filtered through government propaganda and the truth is much more horrifying. There is certainly a lot more reaping than sowing here, and though this novel seems rather hit or miss with fans I found this to be a page-turner of dark excitement and dystopian social criticism that draws us into an unsettling feeling of complicity in the violent voyeurism of The Games that, for all the brutal bleakness, manages to center the fragile humanity and will to endure in a way that keep the story from collapsing under the weight of burdens already well-trod in the series. A fast-paced and fun return to the gruesomeness of Collin’s dystopian vision, this is an excellent new chapter where moments will make you feel as if your �� heart breaks into fragments so small it can never be repaired,�� and Collin’s shows she still has the power to move audiences in new and surprising ways. Because you will never think of squirrels the same again. Sorry.

��I’m entirely the Capitol’s plaything. They will use me for their entertainment and then kill me, and the truth will have no say in it.��

You know that quote from G.K. Chesterton how ��Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist,�� but rather they ��tell children the dragons can be killed��? Replace fairy tale with dystopian fiction and dragons with government and you get to what Collin’s is doing here. A key to good dystopian fiction is showing a behemoth of terrible might and power, but then showing how there is a weak point where the average person can topple it all. If they have luck and good friends on their side I suppose. While the original series felt like a warning against being moths to the flame of marketing media that upholds social inequalities prostrates us before the powerful, Sunrise arrives at a time where we’re already drowning in the muck and the mire. Yet Collin’s doesn’t wallow, in fact she seems to be slapping us with pages saying “STOP THIS, pay attention!�� (which includes all the thirst traps of prequel Snow, stop it, sure he’s so hot but he’s an evil genocidal maniac so nah) and while the novel peers into the gloomiest, most gruesome corners of Panem to highlight the horrors within, there is a spark of revolutionary spirit just itching to catch light. Collin's has always had an excellent philosophical undercurrent to her tales and Sunrise upholds this intellectual weight. She even opens with a quote from David Hume that aptly sets the stage:

'Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.'

Collin's gives a sharp look at the power of propaganda to reduce the masses to cattle in the eyes of the State, to give them entertainment to keep them occupied and to keep the oppressed down with marketing that claims they deserve their poverty. It is in keeping with what Roman poet Juvenal wrote around 100A.D. that 'everything now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.' And now we have kids killing each other in hopes they can put food on the table but are really just lambs for the slaughter. In an interview, Collin's discussed how the version of Haymitch we meet in the start of the original novel was 'misleading' and this book offers a better view of him and why he is. The key to her novel, she mentions, is Hume's concept of implicit submission which he defines as why people 'resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers' and how we can see a reflection of our current society in the world of Panem. As to the question why the many submit to the few in Panem, Collin's says Hume already answers this:

'We're allowing ourselves to be controlled by "opinion." And that's where propaganda comes in. All right, then. "What propaganda de we all consume on a daily basis that maintains this status quo? Is it harder to maintain in an autocracy or a democracy where we pride ourselves on our intellectual or political freedom? How much propaganda does it take to make you think that implicit submission is what you want? Is it inevitable? Is there a way to protect ourselves from it?'

Collins also adds that the novel is also about 'the uncertainty of inductive reasoning, propaganda, love.' Because of the ways propaganda and misinformation worm through the narrative, Haymitch was the most logical choice to be the narrator and so begins our dark journey to the past and back to another of the bloody arenas for the Games.

'He who controls the media controls the minds of the public.'
��Noam Chomsky

The way Collins sets this up with astute parallels to the original trilogy is fantastic and while it is likely the darkest and saddest of the novels, it might well be the most rebellious. To know where things will end up by the era of Katniss only enhances the tension and terror here as we realize little Haymitch’s reward for not dying in childhood is an adulthood of depression and alcoholism leading to activism (can relate, buddy!). But while filling in these gaps in time Collins also emphasizes the gaps between the rich and the poor, the glitz and glamour of the Capitol overflowing with wealth where women can get literal cat ears modified onto their head with the harshness of the districts like 12 where Haymitch is bootlegging so his family can live off the meager pay. The impoverished contestants are less people and objects of disposable entertainment for those in the Capitol who objectify, sexualize, gamble on and bat nary an eye when they die. Things are not peachy in Panem poverty and all roads seem a rocky burden with no goal in sight.

��And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.��

The story begins as the 50th Hunger Games is adding a new twist–double contestants for twice the terrible entertainment. This is the fateful games that ensnared Haymitch to toil as mentor for the rest of his life and with double the contestants Collins manages to pack in double the violence and trauma. We have a father made to mentor his own son knowing damn well he’s not gonna make it and Haymitch isn’t even reaped but a sudden death gets him tossed in anyways. Oh also the reaping is Haymitch’s birthday. Happy birthday, kid! ��Nobody feels like having cake after watching two kids being hauled off to the Capital for slaughter.�� Dead kids and deadly squirrels sure make for a fucked up read and while the novel often nudges towards torture porn (this one is BRUTAL, friends), that is actually a large part of the point–the Capitol’s annual funfest is just straight up torture porn maketed as a patriotic display of power. Snow, disease-ridden and fully leaning into his evil impulses, is an obdurate tyrant at this point dispensing cruelties for the sake of cruelty and hoarding enough power that nobody will dare lift a finger to stop him regardless of how monstrous his actions are. And his henchmen will always ensure ��snow lands on top�� or it’s their heads. The erosion of checks and balances, the inability for the people to keep their leaders in check, leads to terror. Like, oh hey here’s a copy of the dead girl, you’re welcome! *shudders*

��You don’t win the Hunger Games by playing fair. You win by knowing the rules better than they do.��

We always knew the games were bleak and fucked up. But whew does Collin’s really pull back the covers to reveal just how intensely fucked up we are talking about. Like real bad. No spoilers but if you thought everything was chance well…ask Plutarch about that because apparently he’s been here the whole time and Collins leads into some rebellion stuff that makes you realize it was far more orchestrated behind the scenes of playing dumb that occurs in the original novel. Haymitch in particular where being a drunk idiot nobody expects anything from is a great mask if you need to weasel your way in to light the fuse of revolution. It’s really great to see more fleshed out versions of side characters, though some great characters might just be absent…��In fifty years, we’ve only had one victor, and that was a long time ago. A girl who no one seems to know anything about.�� But hey, at least the love interest in this one is also musically inclined. But whew love doesn’t seem to get much of a good break in this world.

��They will not use my tears for their entertainment.��

It’s another year of the Hunger Games and as usual people are like “hey so this shit sucks and maybe we should stop it?�� but really nobody ever does because trying has pretty unfathomably terrible consequences. And not just for you but your loved ones too. ��Don't let them paint their posters with your blood. Not if you can help it,�� is good advice, but also a reminder that dying brutally with dignity is the only victory really, that the dying brutally part is just…it’s going to happen to you. Brace yourself, this book gets rough but is also surprising because what you thought you knew about Haymitch’s life was all under the wraps of government propaganda��

��The Games must end. Here. Now. Every death reinforces the importance of the arena plot succeeding.��

Propaganda takes center stage in the social criticisms on the novel and Collin’s pulls in a lot of poetry quotes from the likes of William Blake and Edgar Allan Poe among others enhance the atmosphere but also remind us how much a pretty pairing of words can affect people. Of course George Orwell is always on mind with a quote at the ready for any good dystopian fiction too:

��All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. I don’t think this matters so long as one knows what one is doing, and why.��

And don’t forget William Blake’s ��A truth that’s told with bad intent, / Beats all the lies you can invent.�� We see how propaganda dupes a populace, how it coaxes submission, how it rubs out the feelings of empathy and humanity if we can cast the poor fighters as glamorous contestants of entertainment, but also how it can mask atrocities and secure power. The role of propaganda to grease the gears of authoritarianism is on full display in Sunrise, but so is the role of the revolutionary who must rise against it. The cost, however, will be great.

��I love you like all-fire.��

Returning to the world of The Hunger Games was a real treat full of trauma but wow did I enjoy Sunrise on the Reaping. This one is harsh. This hits hard and had me feeling all the feelings with BIG SAD being a primary one of those feelings. A well crafted tale that earns its telling by making the long list of familiar names not merely fan service but an opportunity to reveal new truths, deepen the history, and expose the lies of the Capitol to see that it is somehow still even more sinister than we could have realized. This was a fun read and one that was impossible to put down and if Suzanne Collins writes anything Hunger Games, you best believe I’ll be there with bells on.

4./5

��The snow may fall, but the sun also rises.��