“Not now, McGonagall. I’m interrogating Harry.”

Flashback! You are entering a new grade in elementary school. It is the year 1998, and the backwards baseball hat is in style. The cool kids are talking about “Harry Potter” – a sweater clad orphan that rides a broomstick. Teachers everywhere are overjoyed to see their students take an interest in reading books instead of watching MTV and skateboarding. Suddenly, the Harry Potter wave spreads. Soon, everyone will be curious about the adventures beyond Platform 9¾. The Vatican will denounce J.K. Rowling’s work as witchcraft and every boy with brown hair and glasses will be told that they look like Harry Potter, which is actually quite a compliment in many ways. 

It is not surprising that the Harry Potter series has captured and maintained such a loyal fanbase. After all, the books grew up with the readers. As Harry began to discover what he wanted in life, so did we. As Harry developed everlasting friendships, so did we. As Harry went through periods of both joy and sorrow, so did we. As Harry got rejected by the Ravenclaw as his date to the Yule Ball, so did we. (That’s right, Wendy. I still remember.) So of course the books’ popularity spawned movies, videogames, comics, hundreds of fan sites, forums, and spin-offs. But it doesn’t end there. The world of Hogwarts has been (and continues to be) analyzed from Azkaban to the Zombie Trails. Readers of the books and fans of the films are determined to search every stone in the walls of Hogwarts for more information about their favorite wizarding world, and that’s where Boughey and Earnest step in.

“Hey Harry, what’re ya doin’?” I dunno, spyin’ and stuff.

Due to their extensive backgrounds in the world of spycraft, it should come as no surprise that this is a subject they hold in high regard. Harry Potter and the Art of Spying examines our hero’s growth as a young recruit to a top secret covert operative from his tenure at Hogwarts. It is apparent that the writers are experts on the subject, and the extensive contributions of Courtney Klein and Nichole Ellis certainly help make the case that Harry is a damn good secret agent. The Art of Spying begins with a chapter-by-chapter analysis of Harry Potter and the Order Of The Phoenix, the fifth book in J.K. Rowling’s seven book saga. This essentially means that the reader is expected to know all the major plot points of the series beforehand. While it may seem odd to immediately jump right in to book five without first examining the previous four entries, the concept works rather well. It is explained that Harry’s true talents as a spy don’t really hold much weight until Dumbledore’s Army and the Ministry of Magic enter the fray. The first 38 chapters (yes, 38) are littered with footnotes and endnotes, as well as personal quips from the authors; in many ways it reads more like a fun lecture than an actual textbook.

This does not necessarily mean that everything from Sorcerer’s Stone to Goblet of Fire received the axe, however. Notes are scattered throughout the text that provide insight, direct quotes, and even sourced page numbers for reference. In the early chapters we are told that Harry’s skills at reading facial expressions are an absolute necessity in the world of spying, and his interactions with the looming shadow that is the Ministry of Magic paint a pretty clear picture of how interactions between agencies in the wizarding world accurately reflect our own. The real star of the show is Professor Snape, however. Fans of the series are well aware that our grumpy Master of Potions turned out to be one of the greatest Double Agents in the genre. Without getting into the hows and whys, I can say that Boughey and Earnest’s explanations are certainly worth considering the next time you reread… Or re-reread, or re-re-reread the series. Seriously, I can’t tell you why. That’s classified information. (Get it? Classified? That’s a CIA joke.)

The Art of Spying explores more than just the characters, too. What really makes this worth reading is the detail into the actual world of Harry Potter. The Aurors, the Dementors, the Ministry itself, etc. all have a role to play. Each agency has its own rich history, and it is certainly refreshing to see a companion book that delves deeper into the witching well. Another interesting aspect to consider is that the authors are well aware that J.K. Rowling probably didn’t intend for Harry and the gang to become spies. There is a sort of mentality that “If you search hard enough, you can find anything” prevalent from start to finish and the honesty is quite welcome. Included in the pages are expansive glossaries, annotations, and appendixes that are worth looking to for further information. The text itself is very easy to read and it is written in a clear, concise manner.

ALL SPIES MUST HAVE GOOD HAIR. THIS IS THE LAW.

But let’s get to the nitty gritty, shall we? The Art of Spying Harry Potter would probably do pretty well in the CIA. The Boy Who Lived has been trying to blend with his surroundings since he first showed up in The Sorcerer’s Stone (Or Philosopher’s Stone, as it is known in the lovely United Kingdom.) He is a wizard in a Muggle world; he simply does not belong. Naturally there were instances where Harry had used magic before his enrollment in Hogwarts, such as his mishap with the Reptile House. Harry, unwittingly, learns he can communicate with snakes and helps a boa constrictor escape captivity.

Later on we see Harry blowing his cover again. This time, however, he is aware that using magic in the outside world is a big deal. It is hard to forget Aunt Marge’s Big Mistake from Prisoner of Azkaban. Here we see Uncle Vernon’s sister verbally abuse Harry, but she later learns that it may not have been a good idea to insult the boy’s dead parents. Long story short, Harry turns her into a giant balloon. While just about every single person would applaud such an act, the Ministry of Magic certainly did not find it funny. Using their shadowy influence across the realms, the Ministry reprimanded Harry and “dealt with” the matter at hand. Harry’s lesson? Don’t blow your cover.

Then there is the infamous trial scene from Order of the Phoenix. The judges are not exactly on board with Dumbledore sticking up for Harry, but the wizened old Headmaster instructs Harry that knowing your enemy and knowing who is ignorant are two very, very important keys to getting out of trouble. Harry must weigh the consequences of every word and every action. He must be subtle and observe the body movements of each inquisitor. By now, Harry has become rather adept at reading people. Perhaps he may not be a guard in Guantanamo Bay, but he is certainly an agent who can work in the shadows.

While The Art of Spying is not an approved or sponsored entity, it definitely belongs on the shelf of any Harry Potter fan. Those who are not acquainted with the series will have trouble investing time into Boughey and Earnest’s work, however. In short, if you’re interested in the world of Hogwarts and an in depth analysis of the Ministry of Magic, this is absolutely worth reading. It is a large book, ending at 576 pages, with an additional 42 pages of glossary, but it is very easy to read. Harry Potter and the Art of Spying can be purchased from Itasca Books and it is available on Amazon.

Score: [REDACTED]

This was written using an advanced review copy of the book.

© 2014, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Perhaps it was the weird, snow-less winter that led me into the New Year reading assorted books on aliens and the unexplained.  I awoke one morning and looked out not at the expected winter palette of white sky, white ground, black trees, but to an other sky: fuschia, striped with purple clouds and dotted with confused migratory birds.  This was a day ripe for alien invasion, I thought, with the logic of the recently dreaming.  I reasoned that a lack of snow and our global warming trend is all too convenient for off-worlders looking to colonize.  The usual cold would slow the joints of their extra, inner mandibles, and snowflakes blur multi-faceted eyes.  Snow could be just what discourages the average alien looking to probe, conquer and vacation.   Aliens are just harder to imagine thrashing about in snow drifts and contending with entire neighborhoods of down-swaddled men wielding snow blowers.  Well… fun to imagine, but harder.

So, for lack of something to shovel, I spent my leisure time indulging in otherworldly fiction.  The recent Kepler finds of planets thought capable of life reinforce the possibility of “others” out there, watching us, coveting our planet for its tasty people and affordable cellular plans.  Like “post-apocolyptia,” (see Old Man and the Wasteland),  alien fiction is a chunky subset of science fiction, rooted in vivid pulp paperbacks that once sold at train stations and in dime stores.  Tales of sky visitors or things from other dimensions were probably a favorite topic of our fur draped predecessors. Imagine them huddled around campfires, sharing fantastic tales with gestures, emphatic grunts and shadows thrown on cave walls.  So, with a nod to my tangle-haired ancestors, I found several fresh, independently published novels on alien menaces.  Us vs. aliens.  Us as aliens.  Angry, unreasonable, invasive aliens. Some with their own livestock.

I first read the ambitious debut horror novel Red Gods , by James Finan. In this short book, the picturesque English village of Fernby Lakes is experiencing both an intense amount of snowfall and a marauding unknown supernatural entity. (Aliens in snow!?!)  History of the area indicates that it may be a worn spot on the fabric between worlds, and something has slipped through.  The creature that becomes known as the Shade is certainly (happily) not native to this world.  As the book begins, a misfit para-military squad is being sent to access and confront whatever caused the recent massacre in the village.  A pecking order is gruesomely established by the squad’s alpha males before approaching the village, and the violence and evident lack of sanity of one of them makes him a suitable weapon for the coming battle.

The book is presented in short chapters from varying, sometimes odd perspectives. The author brandishes a handful of styles to paint his story’s picture as we shift from plot/story to military-style evaluation report, snippets of folksong, astronomical texts and other extraneous background material.  Finan knows his characters and tells the story with enthusiasm, broad vocabulary and sometimes startling dialogues.  Action sequences are well-imagined, and the segments involving insight into the creature’s psyche are particularly engaging.  Red Gods was a fun, quick read, and a good start on my otherworldly reading menu. For me, it suffers a little from the frequent shifts. Longer fiction has leisure time and page count to change narrative without disrupting the reader from the general flow. Red Gods might benefit if it were lengthened, run past a forthright editor who knows the genre, and republished.

Next came Half Way Home, by Hugh Howey.  While this is a stand-alone, Howey is the author of a couple of series of short fiction.  I’ve been enjoying Howey’s current Wool serial, and I may offer a review of those here in the future.  Half Way Home makes “us” the invading force on a strange new planet.  Spaceships are sent out by terran corporations, complete with terraforming and exploration equipment and an entire community of unborn people.  If conditions are favorable on a new planet, these people are formed and nurtured in life pods.  Each potential person is educated and physically trained in vitro from birth to adulthood to perform a specific task in the community when they are awakened.  While they grow, a base is set up, land cleared, crops started all by remote.  If the planet is judged to be hostile, inviable or unprofitable, the entire project is aborted and destroyed.  In the middle of just such a situation, something causes the abortion sequence to stop.  Amid fire and chaos, some pods open and little more than 50 newly born teenagers are poured out prematurely into their new world.

Told in first person from the perspective of a young man, Porter, who was intended as the community’s psychologist, we follow the struggle of their first days as they see to the immediate needs of the community and form friendships.  The survival tale turns to intrigue as someone suffers a fatal accident and the home planet starts making urgent, unreasonable demands on the half-formed community.  Some of the teens mutiny, and leave the shelter to journey from the little known into the unknown on this nameless planet.

Some books that read as quickly as this one might pass through and be discarded by your consciousness.  But in Half Way Home, I found myself wanting to linger with this group.  To me, that’s one of the hallmarks of a successful book.  I found myself wanting to explore the planet more fully, learn more of its flora and fauna, to watch the community thrive and grow, and see Porter conquer his uncertainties.  There are not a lot of surprises in this book, but the ground it revisits is fertile ground – a new planet ripe for alien infestation – in this case, us.

New Years’ weekend was rainy and chilly – perfect for reading – and I ran across the fun Beyond Armageddon series by Anthony DeCosmo.  It’s a series of five novels (and counting) set on an Earth that’s been invaded by not one breed of alien, but several.  Main character Richard “Trevor” Stone is an ordinary, beleaguered car salesman when the world changes.  Fleeing into the countryside, he meets a mysterious old man who seems somehow part of an even greater conflict.  Stone is given three unlikely gifts – abilities that will help him in the future. Using his special talents to battle or evade alien forces, Stone becomes the one man who can assume the heavy mantle of leadership, gathering what’s left of humanity to him not just to survive, but to fight back.

It’s a very ambitious venture for Stone (and author, DeCosmo) to tackle a total invasion and the total expulsion of alien forces from Earth.  I was surprised by the variety of alien adversaries.  From years of movies and books, one might come to expect a single multi-form beast, sentient ooze, or even a thing riding a sort of pseudo-reptilian dog or mount, etc.  While reading the first part of this book, there’s such a variety of aliens that I said aloud… “did they bring their livestock with them?” It made me smile, reminding me of Teenagers from Outer Space, a 50s movie where humanoid aliens land on Earth, looking for a planet to use as pasture for their giant lobsters.  So few alien flicks give such a reasonable explanation for invading Earth!  But I digress, and Beyond Armageddon doesn’t seem to be about livestock.  Indeed, many of the different aliens are viciously adversarial to one another, like Mothra and Gamera before they teamed up.

I hesitated to review Beyond Armageddon before finishing more of the series.  But after reading the first installment, I was committed enough to know I’ll be wandering into the second.  Book one is an ample 410 pages that reads easily between life’s usual distractions.  The writing is entirely unassuming. The story is told with gusto and at a quick pace as Stone’s band of fugitives carve a pleasant foothold against the alien occupation.  It’s one of those books where it helps to set aside your disbelief, shutter your critical eye and just jump in.  I found it satisfying, like having pizza when you’re hungry for anything but the healthy food you have in the fridge.  And, since reading it made me shirk chores a couple times, I count it as my first guilty pleasure read of 2012.

While I’ve been writing this, nature’s ladled out enough white stuff to insulate me, for now, from all but the most hardy aliens in foul-weather gear.  Their goofy antennaed eyes will be fixed on southern lands instead.  Still, just a glance over smooth sparkling snowscapes makes it so easy to entertain thoughts of other worlds. Armed with a plucky attitude gleaned from these books, I grab my coat and shovel.  “Let them come,” I think, stomping out into the unknown.

The three books I mention here are all available and nearly free on Amazon.  Beyond Armageddon is an older title with current and new additions to the series.  Red Gods was provided for review by James Finan.

© 2012, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Set on a lake in the mythical town of Lacland, Wisconsin, Releasing Gillian’s Wolves tells the story of a woman coming to terms with her husband’s infidelities and transgressions, and taking control of her life. This could very well be considered a coming of age novel where the main character just happens to be in her early fifties.

Gillian Wolf is an independently wealthy housewife and artist, whose cooking is admired by all. Yes, she has an unhappy marriage, but those who know her rave about her many talents. Gillian can simply do no wrong. In fact, her life would be perfect except for her insensitive, ungrateful, philandering husband, Congressman Jack Sach.

Who, by the way, can do no right.

If the characters in this romance novel seem one dimensional it may be because it’s written in the first person, and that person is Gillian Wolf. Without a narrator to balance various points of view, we are left with Gillian’s perspective alone. Throughout the novel characters lavish praise and support upon Gillian and heap scorn and ridicule on her husband. As a result, it reads a bit like a diary where events are twisted in a way to make the writer feel good about a supremely awful situation. I confess there were times I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief.

However, that is just one reviewer’s opinion. There is an audience for Tara Woolpy’s first self-published novel as evidenced by the tremendous number of overwhelmingly positive reviews around the internet. And there are good bits to enjoy. Especially when the author herself has a great deal of experience in a particular area, for example, her background as a science writer and her family history in politics. She’s able to weave those experiences into the story, creating some of the more engaging passages. And, while I may not have agreed with how the characters spoke or behaved, and more importantly without giving anything away, the novel indeed moves forward toward a satisfying conclusion.

Releasing Gillian’s Wolves, by Tara Woolpy. Originally published in ebook and paperback form by Bats in the Boathouse Press, 2011.

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Naomi and Mattie are sisters who want nothing more than to court worthy men and start families of their own. But Mattie’s budding romance with a new convert to the faith may be derailed by her father’s secret, sinful past. And when Naomi’s prodigal suitor whisks her away to a different life in New York, does she forget her obligations to God and to her family? There’s barely room for both story lines in 274 pages, and the two sisters scarcely cross paths outside of a laborious introduction full of long flashbacks and too many characters that come and go unexpectedly.

Dmitriev is an experienced and knowledgeable writer, and her grip on Amish culture is credible and authoritative. Over the course of forty chapters, what initially feels like fetishism eventually reads as respect and genuine affection for a foreign culture anchored in an America that is tolerant but not always accepting. Dmitriev gets all the little details right, from the hairstyles to the vocabulary, all the way through to the complicated reality that the Amish must rely on the kindness of outsiders and the benefits of their technology. But a major problem with the book as a whole is that Dmitriev communicates this information in a workmanlike and clinical manner. There’s no poetry when we learn that braids signify a girl is too young to marry, or that people opposed to electricity have no problem with mobile phones for emergencies. Some of these facts pop up randomly in the middle of long prose sections, as if they were meant to be footnotes or academic sidebars. This stilted presentation has the effect of making our omniscient narrator sound less than all-knowing, a lost outsider in an alien world.

Thankfully, the story comes alive when the action moves to New York. Naomi’s transformation from Amish wallflower to Fifth Avenue fashion maven is plausible, mostly because she doesn’t live on the runway. Her brief time as a model is believable precisely because it’s so brief, and her ultimate destination as a workaday corporate fashion buyer is anything but a fairytale ending. Sadly, Mattie’s forbidden romance back at home is the more interesting of the pair, and has the potential to be a real exploration of gender boundaries and faith-driven decision making as prescribed by the genre. But a complicated subplot involving paternity testing undermines the religious subtext that defines this type of fiction. Mendelian genetics bizarrely block God from being a meaningful character with any impact on the two young women.

It’s very difficult to recommend the book. Amish romance aficionados are not likely to put up with the way “Stolen Bride” deviates from the norm, even if those turns make for better fiction overall. Likewise, general readers aren’t likely to become fans of the genre after reading this particular work, because the dramatic components of the two stories would be considered derivative in any other format.

Stolen Bride, by Valentine Dmitriev. Published 2011 by CreateSpace, ISBN 978-1463665920. 278 pages, softcover.

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Where does our fascination with post-apocalypse time periods come from?  Does it derive from delicious wonderings of how we would fare in a survivalist situation?  How would we solve the loss puzzle of feeding and housing and procreating ourselves while staving off… well, post-apocalyptic stuff?  There’s such a rich variety of challenge to be had!  Radiation, zombies, mutant bog creatures, feral human gangs, alien clean-up crews and more.  An Armageddon for every taste.  Some stories linger on what the actual apocalypse was, but most just charge ahead into how-we-survived tales as dramatic as struggling Pompeian refugees - death and volcanic ruin behind them and the promise of founding Venice ahead.

That was what I was thinking when I picked up Nick Cole’s The Old Man and the Wasteland.  The genre goes back further than you’d think, and by now it seems a well-trodden path.  I nearly put it aside.  After so many movies and books, after hundreds of hours spent creeping through the colorless wastes of Fallout 3 and countless other games, shouldn’t I be world-weary of whatever world the varied apocalypses gave rise to?

Apparently, the answer is no.  My reluctance to revisit another ruined world evaporated as this simple story entangled me – an homage to Old Man and the Sea.  The tiny part of my mind that likes to keep things tidy looked for props to the often force-fed Hemingway as the rest of my mind just enjoyed the book. 

The Old Man here is never named, and lives in a small village on the outskirts of what was Yuma, Arizona.  It’s been many years since the bombs fell, and as we meet him, he’s a scavenger who’s not brought back anything useful to the village in quite some time.  Many believe he is unlucky.  Still vital and sinewy after half a lifetime of scavenging, the old man is faced with becoming obsolete and a burden to his village and family.   As he packs a small bag of provisions, he dismisses the thought of taking the one book he owns with him.  The Old Man and the Sea.  He’s read the book too many times to need it with him, and sees the parallels to himself throughout the story as he makes his decisions.  He’s become Hemingway’s hero, whose empty nets were seen as a curse by his village, and who goes out into the sea alone to land a great fish. Our old man leaves his village before dawn, heading into the desert wastes in hopes of bringing back something useful that will restore his place in the village and break his streak of bad luck. 

It is a short book – so I won’t detail any of the challenges the man faces on his journey - but the author does a great job of managing the tension in this walkabout through a predominantly empty environment.  Both the scenery and the quest seem remarkably fresh.  There is still beauty in the rugged landscape, and the man’s appreciation of small, vital things: fresh water, fire, and food (even if it’s rattlesnake) made me want to follow this man to the end.  His reality before the apocalypse had become much like a dream to him, affording very little time for thought of loss but guiding him with landmarks as he wanders the shattered highways, seeking the old desert cities.  Along the way, his instincts, learned survival skills and cunning prove much more valuable than anything in his pack.  While he could survive alone for the rest of his life, he is driven to return successfully to his village or die having tried to be useful, and it endows this ordinary man with a mantle of nobility that acknowledges survival of the human spirit.  That is the cleansing punchline, or should be, to all such dusty wasteland tales, and the author achieves it here with a light hand.

A book like this is a great way to spend an afternoon.  I looked up from its last pages satisfied, and I appreciated, for a moment, the shelter around me and the least can of beans in my cupboard.  Okay, only for a moment.  Then I ordered take-out. 

I’ll keep an eye out for Nick Cole’s next book

The Old Man and the Wasteland, by Nick Cole. Published in paperback April 2011 by CreateSpace ISBN 1461076382. Also available for Kindle and Nook

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

To his credit, editor David Lee Summers has assembled a very capable stable of authors who have an obvious love for the subject matter. Accomplished writers and editors like Patrick Thomas and Danielle Ackley-McPhail bring experience and brevity to work that would otherwise collapse under its own weight. Every work Summers chose to include is easy to read and to enjoy, and there’s no danger of being distracted by made-up terminology or faux military processes.

But this brevity only serves to accentuate how well-trodden these paths are. We’ve already seen the alien invasion, the hopeless last stand of an abandoned outpost, and the salvage mission gone wrong. Even more recent tropes are well represented, like the robot impersonating a human or the lone survivor trapped with no hope of escape. Just about every story in the book has been done as a 1950s cliffhanger serial or a Star Trek episode. That doesn’t take away from the quality of the writing in any way, but it’s hard to recommend the book as a whole when it’s all so familiar.

A notable exception would be Dana Bell’s “Chosen One”, a story of an alien encounter told from an unusual non-human perspective. Bell’s story is truly original and has the added benefit of being well-suited to the medium. Some science fiction concepts simply can’t be filmed or animated, and Bell uses her eight pages of dense prose to maximum effect. If only the story weren’t so short, it might be worth the full price of the book for that one work alone.

Full Throttle Space Tales 4: Space Horrors, edited by David Lee Summers. Published 2010 by Flying Pen Press, ISBN 978-0-9818957-6-5. 284 pages, softcover.

© 2011, The Indie Mine. All rights reserved.

Brandon and I have both started reading The Hunger Games series together and thought we would provide our unique insights in companionate reviews. First up is volume one of Suzanne Collins’ young adult series.

She Read

Katniss Everdeen: A Complete Heroine in a Fractured World

Touted as the currently most popular series in adolescent literature, The Hunger Games features a resilient heroine, Katniss Everdeen, in a dystopian North America known as Panem. Katniss lives in the outermost Zone 12, the mining district of Panem, steeped in stark poverty and degradation. (There was a Zone 13, but the central government obliterated it for their insubordination and as a warning to the other 12 zones.)

The Hunger Games presents a dystopian future of Western civilization, similar to Children of Men, 1984, V for Vendetta , or even the classic German film Metropolis. In these stories, there is always an elite class living in opulence and luxury while the masses toil in abject poverty. This dystopian society is often fractured into specialized zones or sectors with which the citizens are deeply identified. In Panem, the central government not only rations out food to the citizens in the zones while mandating hard labor for little pay, but they also host a yearly entertainment event called The Hunger Games. One boy and one girl are selected as “tributes” from each of the 12 zones to participate in the televised survival competition, killing each other until one sole survivor ultimately outwits, outplays, and outlasts the other 23 contestants. It’s presented as bloodthirsty entertainment in the tradition of The Running Man, Death Race 2000, and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but unlike those films, the participants here are children. The games further deepen the dividing lines between the zones, pitting their children against one another in a grim battle to the death, subtly rebuking any swell of unity among the zones that could arise from the horror of the games themselves.

I found the setting and plot to be both intriguing and startling. I wondered how Collins could pull off the feat of presenting such violence in a young adult book. Could her narrator Katniss kill for her survival and still be considered a hero? From the beginning, it is evident that an ex Deus machina device couldn’t possibly be employed. Katniss wouldn’t stumble upon an underground revolutionary group in the Capital, she wouldn’t disarm her fellow tributes with persuasive rhetoric, and she wouldn’t martyr herself for the lives of others. The first person narration and the published presence of the follow-up two volumes assured her survival in my mind, but I kept wondering, at what cost?

I’ve always craved adventure stories featuring heroines. I adore Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the heroine who lives a double life that is both normal and supernatural. Sometimes the bogies of domestic troubles, rocky relationships, and financial struggles are more daunting than the vampires and demons Buffy slays regularly. Modeled after Superman tropes, Buffy’s double life is often unrewarding, but deeply necessary in maintaining the human race. And like Superman, Buffy follows a noble code: despite how rotten some people can be, Buffy doesn’t kill humans. The limitation is almost a flaw, but if she did cross that line, her nobility would be tarnished. She would no longer be a hero.

Collins’ book dives directly into this dilemma. While not superhuman, Katniss is stronger, faster, and smarter than most girls and boys her age – a born survivor in many respects. Like heroines such as Buffy, Katniss draws her strength from those she protects: her mother and her young sister, Prim. Again, the similarities are striking, for Buffy sacrificed herself for the love of her younger sister, too. But in The Hunger Games, Katniss has put herself in the position of either “kill or be killed,” and it is this sick twist on these games that makes them so popular with Panem. So the real crux of the story is not wondering if Katniss can win the Hunger Games, but can she do what it takes to win? Can she kill other children and live with the consequences?

Collins offers us a look at one past winner in the character of Haymitch who habitually self-medicates with alcohol decades after his victory. Observing Haymitch, Katniss wisely knows that there is no real winner of the Hunger Games and the government knows it, too. It is yet another way to subordinate the people, to keep them powerless and nearly subhuman. While Katniss is well aware of this agenda, she travels to the Capital to participate in the games. Her motivation to win lies in her maternal need to care for her mother and sister.

Panem is a depressing portrait of inequality taken to extremes. When I picture the world of Panem, especially of Zone 12, I see it as the rundown future. Black, gray, and brown colors seem to permeate the atmosphere. When Katniss travels west to what was formerly Colorado but is now the Capital, the heart of Panem, it must be like Dorothy waking up in Oz or Alice tumbling into Wonderland. All the new luxuries and bright colors abound, and yet Katniss envisions her death in this place. Like Alice and Dorothy, Katniss longs for home and she knows it will be a battle to reach it. Like Alice and Dorothy, risks will be taken and difficult decisions will be made. And like all heroes in young adult novels, Katniss will grow, will come of age, and will learn the difference of moving painfully from childhood to adulthood.

In many ways, Katniss is a preternatural adult, forced to grow up more quickly due to base necessity. Her mother is ineffectual and after her husband’s death failed to be a mother at all, laying all the responsibility upon young Katniss’ shoulders. By hunting and gathering, Katniss functions as the literal nurturer of this family of women. By focusing on the needs of others, Katniss has denied her own emotional needs. While she deeply cares for the well-being of other citizens in her zone, she denies her own personal feelings of attachment to others, whether it is her hunting partner Gale or her Hunger Games partner Peeta. Despite this denial, Katniss learns in both relationships that two people together are much more effective than one person alone.

Some reviewers have asserted that while practical and resourceful, Katniss is emotionally stunted, never asserting herself and her own desires. But again, I find this self-negating quality in Katniss to be the very mark of the hero, constantly thinking of others’ needs above her own. And from this devotion, the seeds of a revolution are actually planted in Panem. Katniss subverts the carefully scripted intentions of the Games by paying “tribute” to a fallen tribute, decorating the lifeless body with flowers and singing native songs – a gesture which moves the tribute’s fellow citizens so much, that they actually pay Katniss with a gift of bread – something that has never occurred in the Games before. The Games finally culminate in another courageous act of unity in the shape of a suicide pact, which is devised by Katniss from both cunning and exhaustion.

Suzanne Collins has given us a complete heroine with Katniss Everdeen in the fractured world of Panem. Katniss is physically and emotionally strong, able to withstand the harrowing experiences of the Hunger Games and survive intact. In doing so, she has fractured the power center itself of Panem while further unifying the disparate zones. While some reviewers remark that Katniss is not a fully actualized heroine, I think time will tell as I read the next two volumes. I suspect the love triangle of Katniss, Peeta, and Gale will move toward resolution as Panem itself moves toward revolution.

He Read

The Hunger Games: A Fascinating Imagining of a Possible Future

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t keep up with all the popular trends.  That’s why The Indie Mine has a staff to help me fill in the gaps.  So it should be no surprise that prior to a month ago, I’d never even heard of the book The Hunger Games, let alone the feature film set to release next year.  And after being told it compares favorably to the Twilight series, I was content with my ignorance up until that point.  A reveal of the basic plot of the first novel in the series, however, turned me on my head.

The first element of the story that caught my attention is the world in which the characters exist.  It’s a reconstructed North America sometime in the distant future.  The general populace has been wiped out by natural disasters and war at some point in the past.  I’m always intrigued by post-apocalyptic stories.  I enjoy the character study involved and seeing how society has physically rebuilt itself, whether people still behave with the same morals and laws, and what the ruling/governing structure is like.  In other words, I like to know what remnants of our current selves remain and what’s changed to adapt to the new world.  Has society stripped out the bad or the good?

The division of Panem is a fascinating one.  There’s a wealthy, technologically advanced capital along with twelve separate impoverished districts or zones.  Those in the capital want for nothing while everyone else does whatever they can just to stay alive.  To rise against the current power means death or worse as evidenced by the complete demolition of zone 13.  The capital keeps a Big Brother-like eye on everyone and has established the barbaric Hunger Games as a way of reminding its citizens that rebellion is futile.

The Hunger Games is an annual gladiatorial style event in which two children, one boy and one girl are selected at random from each district, paraded around as mascots, and dropped off in an unknown, remote location to do battle with one another until one competitor is left alive.  The whole event is broadcast to everyone in the nation like it’s the Super Bowl on steroids.  Wages are often placed on the entrants and sponsors can choose to send aids to their chosen entrants for exorbitant prices.  It’s a neat premise, but hardly an original one.  However, it’s not often where an event forces children into a war-like setting, and perhaps that’s what first drew me to picking up the book.

The actual set-up for the event is mostly predictable.  Inevitably, the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, is going to end up in the event one way or another.  Having her substitute for her little sister is a nice twist and does help to set her apart from some of the other characters.  However, pitting her against Peeta, a boy from her district to whom she owes her life, is a rather obvious way to insert a moral conflict.  The only more obvious choice would’ve been if her best friend Gale had been chosen and probably would’ve forced me to put away the book in disgust.

The days leading up to the start of the combat are an interesting read.  The author provides great detail in all of the pomp and circumstance involved.  Participants, or tributes as they are called here, are paraded around like beauty pageant contestants in order to try to garner financial support during the fight.  Tributes are also evaluated on their various survival skills which are of use during the fighting.  Their scores go a long way towards determining how many sponsors they will pick up.  The decadence of the capital is revealed through the sheer volume and sophistication of the meals and banquets provided to everyone involved.  This portion of the book provides a great look at the dichotomy between the “haves” and the “have nots” and works to draw the reader towards disdain for the ruling power.

The Hunger Games itself was a combination of both fun action and disappointing predictability.  Knowing that the series is a trilogy, you never feel any real sense of danger for Katniss.  However, it’s still fun to see how she eludes her pursuers and deals with the changing conditions of the environment brought on by the event organizers.  The shifting alliances forged by Katniss also keep the plot interesting.  As I stated before, there’s a fair amount of predictability here.  In fact, of the 24 tributes, I correctly guessed who the final three would be before the fighting even started.  In that sense it’s not really different from any number of Hollywood survival action movies.  You know who the major players are and because of that knowledge you know they will be there at the end.  The fun is in seeing how they get there.

The romance between Katniss and Peeta is played up off and on through the book once the two are selected as tributes.  Naturally it was also the aspect of the story I was least looking forward to after having heard the Twilight comparisons.  However, most of the actual execution and use of it I actually enjoyed.  The two characters use a fictional love between the two of them to garner support from the sponsors and sympathy from just about everyone witnessing the events.  They even use it to force a rather unsurprising rules change towards the end of the book.  I enjoyed this aspect of the relationship; however, I did not enjoy the teen drama surrounding it.  I understand that Katniss is a young character, but I couldn’t help but be annoyed by the number of times the author brought up the fact that Katniss didn’t know how Peeta felt about her.  There’s a difference between being doubtful and being oblivious.  Even if Katniss couldn’t put it together, the author didn’t have to keep hitting us over the head with it.  Thankfully, that storyline didn’t dominate the entire book; however, it leaves me a little concerned for the sequels.  I’m far more interested in how the world around Katniss will change, not which guy will shine brightest in her eyes.

For a novel aimed at a younger demographic and arguably another gender, I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.  Suzanne Collins has built a fascinating world with a society and history I’m genuinely interested in learning more about.  It’s my hope that in the sequel we’ll get to see much more of that world and see how the general populace’s feelings and actions towards the ruling government change after the events of The Hunger Games.  I have concerns over the predictability of the story and the romantic angst of the main character, but that wasn’t enough to stop me from finishing this first title, nor will it affect my interest in the sequels.

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