Suzanne Collins, author or the bestselling Hunger Games trilogy, has returned with a prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping (2025), focussed on Haymitch Abernathy, Katniss Everdeen's mentor.
The citizens of Panem hate the annual Reaping. On this day in each of the nation's twelve districts, one boy and one girl aged between 12 and 18, are chosen by lottery to travel to the Capitol to participate in the Hunger Games. The televised games are a punishment for a historical rebellion and a reminder that the Capitol is supreme.
Readers of this series will recall that Haymitch is the victor of the 50th Hunger Games, so it is no spoiler here to know that he will be reaped and will succeed in the arena. But what is interesting is how it happened and how Haymitch became the drunken mentor we meet in the later series.
Whisked off to Panem, Haymitch and the other tributes are paraded through the streets, promoted, and stylised as part of the propaganda machine that accompanies the Games. Here he meets people familiar from the later books in the series - Effie Trinkett, Beetee, Wiress, Mags, Plutarch, and of course the evil President Snow.
Once in the arena, Collins shares the horrifying fate the Gamemakers' have prepared for the tributes - pests, poisons and paranoia. Haymitch has a plan to break the arena and stop future reaping, but is he brave enough to pull it off? Can he do so when there are forty-seven other tributes he needs to protect and/or kill to make it to the end?
Haymitch's relationship with other tributes - Louella, Maysilee, Wyatt, and Ampert - are fully formed and touching. So too is his love for his girlfriend Lenore Dove, which provides motivation to return to in District Twelve. The heartwarming alliance of Newcomers against the Careers provides a glimmer of hope among the horror of the games.
I really enjoyed this return to Panem. Collins has crafted a page-turner that harkens back to the excitement of her the original The Hunger Games (2008). It also filled in some gaps, drawing connections to the later series. As we get to know young Haymitch and his struggles, we see the full extent of President Snow's wrath and we learn that the image created of Haymitch in the later novels is a lie. So much so that I now want to go back and re-read the original series with a new perspective on Haymitch.
Collins also adds poetic flavour to the story - often quoting from Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven, William Blake's Ah! Sun-Flower - and two epigraphs by philosopher David Hume.
Sunrise on the Reaping is not the first prequel to The Hunger Games. Collins previously explored the early life of Coriolanus Snow and the 10th Hunger Games in Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020). I pre-ordered that book and started it, but I did not finish it. I suspect my heart wasn't in it at that early stage of the pandemic to read a dystopian story. I will have to give it another go. I also hope that Collins is planning a trilogy of prequels and that we may get a third book in this series. Would love one on Plutarch Heavensbee, leader of the rebellion.
As I read Sunrise on the Reaping I also listened to the audiobook read by Jefferson White. He did a fantastic job of portraying Haymitch and the other characters, enhancing my experience of the novel.
My reviews of other Suzanne Collins' books in this series are available on this blog: