Sunrise on the Reaping ★★★★
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic
When Suzanne Collins released The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2020, it was a chance for fans of the original Hunger Games trilogy to return to the world of Panem, 10 years after readers bid goodbye to Katniss and Peeta. With that prequel, Collins delivered a double backstory that took place during the 10th annual Hunger Games: that of District 13’s first victor, Lucy Gray Baird, and of a young President Snow.
Lucy Gray was a vibrant, colourful character to love, but by the end, the story seemed to fall short. Mostly, this had to do with the fact that a young Coriolanus Snow just was not able to win me over, knowing the man he is to become. This is the gamble an author takes with prequels to well-developed and well-loved books.
What we were given with that first book was a taste of the Hunger Games before they became the excellently crafted, albeit twisted spectacle we were first introduced to. I appreciated the backstory and little details that one could connect to characters further down the line, but it was a far cry from what first won me over as a reader.
With the release of the second prequel in the franchise, Sunrise on the Reaping, Collins has returned to form. This time, the story follows 16-year-old Haymitch Abernathy, the alcoholic-turned-mentor to Katniss and Peeta 24 years later.
It comes as no surprise that a wretch like Haymitch had a tragic coming-of-age, and Collins doesn’t hold back the punches. During what starts out as a heart-wrenching Reaping, Haymitch gets thrown into the 50th Hunger Games in a most unfair twist of fate when he tries to save the girl he loves. From the first pages, the story is written with a raw emotion that had me fully in its grip. As we learn, despite the hand he gets dealt, Haymitch has a good heart. As a boy, he cared deeply. He was brave. He believed in making a mark on an unjust world. In this book, he’s just the kind of kid from District 13 you want to get behind.
This time round, the story manages to take you back to the world Collins initially introduced her readers to, and she has produced a Hunger Games narrative that’s closer to the first two books. There’s an arena with a cornucopia of vile things devised by the game-makers. There’s loss and anger and cruelty and glimpses of humanity through scheming and plotting — both in and out of the arena. It’s not quite the mastery of Katniss’s Hunger Games, mostly because it’s lacking our original heroine, but it gets close, and it offers a hint of that addiction that laced the first three books.
What this book does offer — and what I relished — is more threads with which Collins weaves her backstory. Whether she always had these details in the back of her mind when she started writing this body of work, or whether she’s conceptualised them now as she’s expanded the origins of this dystopian world she’s built, they are satisfying regardless. They’re not spoilers or unnecessary details, but rather what I think of as post-the-hunt Easter eggs that click into place with a nostalgic familiarity.
We’re offered more of the Covey, the nomadic, music-loving group-come-family from which Lucy Gray hailed, are given a glimpse into the forming of Plutarch Heavensbee’s rebel tendencies, and meet a fresh-faced Effie Trinket. There are also new characters who are tied to familiar names you would remember from Mockingjay.
That said, nothing quite prepares you for what lies in store for Haymitch by the end of it all. But while the ending is one of loss and despair, these are not the feelings readers are left with. The epilogue makes a redeeming save with what gave me the feeling that we’ve reached the end. I don’t think that Collins is going to squeeze out another book — and I certainly don’t think she should. This is the final chapter we needed — it’s the tiny, neat, red ribbon with which she’s tied together a prolific body of work.
