The books in The Hunger Games series remain as popular as ever. Photo / Getty Images
The latest book in the series, Sunrise on the Reaping, is the fastest-selling YA book of the year.
Shortly after Sean Connors returned from spring break, the University of Arkansas professor of English education asked a classroom of students if anyone had spent their holiday reading the recently released fifth Hunger Games novel, Sunrise on the Reaping. A number of hands shot up, and, as he recalled, “a pretty good conversation” ensued.
In retrospect, he said, there was one comment that stood out to him: when a student declared that the novel’s chief antagonist, President Snow, is her generation’s villain. If you grew up in the ’80s, she explained, Darth Vader was shorthand for Bad Guy, and then, of course, the millennials had Voldemort. While Zoomers may nod their heads in agreement with Connors’ student, what may be most interesting about this proclamation is that when the first Hunger Games novel came out, in 2008, and introduced readers to the tyrannical president of Panem, the youngest members of Generation Z hadn’t yet been born.
That long reign of villainy may explain, in part, the popularity of Sunrise on the Reaping. Those teenagers and 20-somethings who made the original trilogy such a success? They’re still craving the worst horrors that author Suzanne Collins can dream up. But so is a generation of young people who are turning to dystopian fiction to either escape from or reflect these, shall we say, challenging times.
Sunrise on the Reaping is the fastest-selling young-adult book of the year so far. According to publisher Scholastic, in its first week alone, the novel sold 1.5 million English copies worldwide and twice as many copies domestically as Collins’ previous instalment, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020).
Compared with other series, the Hunger Games’ shelf life is remarkably long, and also unusual for the way its popularity has ebbed and flowed. Brenna Connor of Circana, which tracks book sales, surveyed the numbers for all five books – the original trilogy plus the two prequels – and was not surprised by the early sales data: the initial three releases sold many copies, and many more after the four movie adaptations were released from 2012 to 2015.
“We’re talking millions in annual unit sales,” she said. “And that is kind of a typical pattern for these types of series that have such a prominent following and a page-to-screen adaptation.”
Also unsurprising was the lull that followed the release of the fourth film, Mockingjay – Part 2, in 2015: shiny new objects appeared; readers moved on. But then, in May 2020, smack in the middle of pandemic lockdowns, the first prequel was released. The response to that book, focusing on the villain origin story of Coriolanus Snow, was initially more muted than the book-buying frenzy for Sunrise on the Reaping. But it slowly picked up steam, and Connor has a couple of theories why. The first is the release of the movie adaptation in 2023, which boosted sales for the whole series by 300%. The second, possibly more profound driver was the rise of BookTok, the corner of TikTok where readers – predominantly young women and girls – tout their favourite books and authors. For the last five years, one of those authors has been Collins.
As a professor and fan, Thomas Paradis saw the oscillations firsthand. In 2013, he launched a Hunger Games conference at Northern Arizona University that was so well-attended, “the faculty couldn’t believe it,” he said. “It was standing-room-only in the classrooms.” And for the last seven years, he’s taught a Hunger Games course at Butler University. There was a moment after the trilogy and before the prequels when he noticed there was “less and less of a buzz” about the series, he said. “It was almost becoming historical literature.”
“And then we all had the shock of our lives,” he recalled. “No one expected Collins to write a prequel.”
And just like that, a new generation of fans emerged.
Holly Mandziak and Emily McGeary are hosts of the Hunger Games podcast Into the Arena, and they recently helped throw a midnight release party for “Sunrise” at Tattered Cover Book Store in Colorado. The event included games and contests, “and our trivia winners,” Mandziak recalled, “were little girls that were probably like 10 or 12 years old.” (If that sounds a little young to be reading a book about children fighting to the death, just remember that the internet exists.) The wide age range of party attendees echoed the demographic that tunes into the pair’s podcast: The largest share of listeners are between 23 and 27, followed by 18-to-22-year-olds and 28-to-34-year-olds. But they also have listeners under 17 and over 45.
Seeing preteen kids gravitating to the books made Mandziak a little nostalgic. She was 11 years old when she discovered the first novel in 2011. (McGeary, meanwhile, started reading the books in 2010 at 16 – “about Katniss’s age”.)
Mandziak, McGeary and other Hunger Games aficionados seem to agree that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was always going to be a harder sell than Sunrise.
The protagonist of the newest book, Haymitch, “is an easy character to root for,” said Stef Woods, who taught a course about the Hunger Games franchise at American University. If the book didn’t make that clear enough, then Woody Harrelson’s portrayal of the character in the movies certainly did. Ballad’s focus on Snow allowed readers to see “moments of his human side,” Woods said. “But by and large he was evil.” Who would you rather spend 400-plus pages with?
But that brings up another question, which is, during our divided times, is it a surprise that people are opting for stories about oppressive societies?
It isn’t the first time. “Since the start of the year, I’ve seen more dystopian classics hit the bestseller list, so Fahrenheit 451, Animal Farm, Handmaid’s Tale,” said Connor, of Circana. She saw a similar trend in 2017.
Booksellers tell Connor that a lot of the readers looking for these titles are young. “And that makes sense,” she said, “because they were much younger for Trump’s first term, and now that they’re maybe 16, 18 years old, they’re seeking out these books that they wouldn’t have read at a younger age to better understand or safely explore these dystopian themes.”
Maybe, then, every generation gets the villain they need. That’s how Connors, the University of Arkansas professor, sees it: if Star Wars played on our collective fear of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, the Hunger Games series is channelling more current anxieties – about economic disparities, authoritarian regimes and threats to civil liberties.
There are reasons readers relate to Katniss, Haymitch and other characters whose fates were thrust upon them.
“Whether we’re looking at natural disasters, whether we’re looking at the economy or politics or covid,” Woods said, “we didn’t volunteer for so much in our reality.”
A live cook-off featured ox heart, wapiti, wild boar and plenty of edible wildlife.