Review: Sunrise on the Reaping

Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Haymitch novel the fans have been clamoring for for years? Or does Collins have a few curveballs up her sleeve?

As it happens, ¿porqué no los dos?

OLD PINECONE GENERAL'S WARNING: DO NOT READ THIS REVIEW UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THE BOOK FIRST. GO INTO THE BOOK WITH AS LITTLE KNOWLEDGE AS POSSIBLE.

The second Hunger Games prequel goes back 24 years from the original novel to the year of the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, where Haymitch had to compete against double the usual number of tributes in a beautiful but deadly arena where everything was genetically engineered to either poison or eviscerate the children. Or, perhaps, ¿porqué no los dos? Just like the original trilogy, Collins has Haymitch tell his story in a first-person present tense narrative, and it's indicated in the epilogue that this, and the original trilogy, are meant to be in-universe memoirs, as opposed to The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes because Snow would no longer be able to tell his own story. For that reason, I've seen fans speculate that should Collins write another prequel (a book about Finnick's Games being almost as much in demand as Haymitch's story has been, especially when Songbirds and Snakes came out and most fans were pissed that Snow would be the protagonist, not that we knew to expect Lucy Gray Baird as the real stealer of our hearts), it'll also be easy to tell which ones are about characters who survive past the events of the original trilogy.

Now, we may think we know Haymitch's story based on the snippets we learned in the original trilogy, especially Catching Fire which showed "official" archive footage of the second Quarter Quell. Collins had told us that this book would not only explore the series' overarching theme of how the few hold power over the many, but also the nature of how propagandistic sausages are made. And it shows in the key differences between this book's Games and those of the original trilogy. The latter, having been held decades longer, is a more well-oiled machine, but also shows how the Capitol's control actually loosened over the years, to the point where it could only have been at that point in the timeline that the next rebellion would have been successful.

Here, the tributes spend much of their time in chains, Capitol officials are frequently physically abusive, and a lot goes wrong even from the moment of the Reaping. Breaks from the script prove lethal, and the Capitol propagandists are forced to scramble and substitute a lot of people in, people who weren't supposed to be involved. Not to mention filming repeated takes of everything to create the illusion of a perfectly conducted live spectacle.

Naturally, a lot of our most iconic characters make important appearances in this book as their younger selves. Effie Trinket is bubbly as ever, but the woman who fills her future role as Capitol representative at the Reaping, Drusilla, plays like Effie's evil aunt. Plutarch Heavensbee is getting his start as a propagandist, but he's already clearly disillusioned with the evils of the regime. President Snow is already so deep in his campaign of poisoning everyone who stands in his way that it's physically ruined him (and on the subject - I could NOT read his lines without imaging Kiefer Sutherland playing him in the upcoming 2026 film adaptation, honoring his late father Donald and his iconic performance as the elder gamesman of totalitarianism.)

Though the original trilogy hinted that Maysilee Donner was Haymitch's lost love, this book reveals that they actually didn't used to get along at all. In fact, Haymitch's real love is Lenore Dove Baird, clearly related to Lucy Gray Baird, though exactly how is left unknown. All that is known is that Lenore Dove is raised by two Covey uncles - both gay, an open secret amidst Panem's institutionalized homophobia - and that her cousin, Haymitch's friend Burdock, is Katniss's future father. Meanwhile, Katniss's future mother, Asterid March, shows just how far back her work as a healer goes.

Since not every District has a previous victor to serve as a mentor (Lucy Gray Baird's whereabouts remain unknown), past victors now serve as mentors for other districts in a sort of call-forward to the all-star edition of the Hunger Games in the third Quarter Quell (it's specifically revealed that Wiress won the 49th Hunger Games exactly one year before this book, and Beetee won the 34th Hunger Games, as he says that Haymitch was born on the day he was reaped.) And continuing the use of Survivor-like reality TV motifs, this book takes the concept of reality-show alliances to its greatest level yet, as non-Career tributes band together even before the games begin, to form a super-alliance which they call "The Newcomers."

Collins has now released two new novels in the time of two immoral, illegal occupations of the White House - the first coming out during Covid so there could be no widespread celebrations or parties, and now the second at the dawn of another fascist attack on America's soul, where our allies are turning their backs and treating this country as an irredeemable pariah. It seriously disgusts me that even blue states, cities, and voters are expected to accept being rejected and boycotted and walled off by the rest of the world (although I know there are still plenty of people in other countries, countries that have made it a huge point of campaigning to never buy any American products, who are reading this book from a clearly anti-fascist American author who deserves every penny.) But I will never join the ranks of those even within America advocating to isolate us from international commerce and tourism, because I live by a simple rule - if Trump wants it, it's unacceptable. And we all know he wants there to be no one coming to this country except sinister oligarchs.

To the rest of the world: Suzanne Collins is one of the best of us, and she captures, in Haymitch, our anger at the evil tyrants who keep hijacking our country and undermining our civilization. People like her, people like me, people like us sane Americans, we need international help to prosper in the face of Trump and Musk, and to be the phoenix rising from the ashes.

We do not need to wait 25, 50, or 75 years to finally throw off these evils.

We do not need to be left to calcify into becoming Panem.

What we need is for Collins's books to stay as warnings and not as prophecies.

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