I was planning on doing a movie blog this week but wasn’t able to get out to the theaters. I did, however finish the new Hunger Games book over the weekend so we’ll do a double book club blog this week. Let’s dive in.
Sunrise on the Reaping is the fifth installment of the Hunger Games series, and it tells the story of Haymitch Abernathy’s victory at the 50th Hunger Games. We had previously only known Haymitch as the miserable drunken mentor to Katniss and Peeta during the original trilogy, it was great to get a backstory on him. I love Suzanne Collins as an author, between Hunger Games and Gregor the Overlander she wrote two of my favorite series growing up. It’s awesome that 20 years from the first time I read her work, I still enjoy and look forward to the new releases.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes released about 5 years ago to mixed reviews. I personally loved it, and I loved the movie, but the overall criticism of its pacing was fair. I was curious to see how she went about writing Haymitch’s story. The first two books in the series really hit their climax in the third act, where Ballad has a third act that features mainly resolution. I personally liked the pacing of the first trilogy better, when you have something as impactful as winning the Hunger Games it has to be one of the last parts of the book.
This book starts by showing Haymitch as a 17-year-old boy, very similar to Katniss where he is focused on protecting and providing for his family. He has a love interest, a Covey girl named Lenore Dove who is a carbon copy of Lucy Gray Baird from Ballad. It’s full of easter eggs and truly fun to see Haymitch in this light. On the day of the reaping, four kids are chosen instead of two in celebration of the “Quarter Quell”. Haymitch and Lenore are spared, but one of the male tributes is killed while trying to escape. Lenore Dove is comforting a mother who lost her child to the reaping, and Haymitch steps in to stop her from getting hurt. Unfortunately, his actions got him selected as the replacement tribute for District 12.
He’s going with Wyatt Callow (son of the local bookies), Maysilee Donner (daughter of the town merchants), and Louella McCoy (young neighbor of Haymitch). Haymitch does not have any love for Wyatt or Maysilee but is devasted that young Louella has been sacrificed – she was his “sweetheart”, and he knows she can’t survive the games.
The tributes are taken on their journey to the capital. Some familiar faces here- Plutarch Heavensbee, Efie Trinket and President Snow all make appearances. Haymitch is impressed with Maysilee not backing down from anyone, but ultimately decides he will only ally with Louella. A series of incompetence follows, but eventually they get to the parade. When things go awry, Louella is killed and Haymitch brings her body to the front of the parade to show President Snow that he won’t back down.
This gets Haymitch a meeting with Snow at Plutarch’s apartment, where Snow ominously warns him about the dangers of defying the capital.
Let’s get to the training part. Haymitch meets three characters shown in Catching Fire – Beetee, Mags, and Wiress who are all serving as mentors for these games. Beetee is being forced to mentor his son Ampert as punishment for him trying to sabotage the capitol’s communication. Mags was a previous victor, very compassionate and we see a lot more of her personality than we did in Catching Fire. Wiress won the last games by hiding and was much different than we saw her in Catching Fire. Without spoiling, you will learn why all three of them ending up playing an important part of the revolution.
Ampert approaches Haymitch about joining his super-alliance, all of the districts against the “Careers” from districts who normally win the games. Haymitch initially refuses. Louella has been replaced by a body double “Lou Lou” who is brainwashed/drugged past knowing who she is. Haymitch slowly comes around on Wyatt and Maysilee, agreeing to all join Ampert’s team. While training, Haymitch learns from Beetee that they have a plan to blow the water tank up at the Arena and flood the brain. Haymitch agrees, but his attitude in training gets him the lowest score from the game makers. They spend the next few days planning this and locking in. At the end of training, Haymitch announces that he will be going off separately, feigning that he will be a target and doesn’t want to draw the attention to the team. His real reasoning is that he needs to blow the tank, only Ampert knows and will meet him to give him the explosives.
The games start and Haymitch heads out on his own. With double the tributes, he hears the death cannon a lot and is fighting an internal battle to not to help his friends. Days pass while he fights off poisoning and looks for the water tank, eventually he sees a disheveled Ampert, and they rendezvous. Wyatt died protecting Lou Lou, and Ampert describes the gore of the first battle and all the causalities they suffered before fleeing to the mountain. Haymitch tries to get a shaken Ampert replenished, but he knows the boy is scared now. That doesn’t stop them from finding the water tank and blowing it up, but the game makers punished them by sending a pack of mutt squirrels to kill Ampert. The rest of the arena is punished by the game makers exploding the mountain (which turns out to be a Volcano) which kills several more tributes.
Haymitch is devasted by the loss, and more importantly the game makers were able to restore the arena. He encounters a weakened but alive Lou Lou and shifts his focus to keeping her alive. However, they run into a deadly pack of flowers that kill Lou Lou and leaves Haymitch alone. He encounters a couple of careers who ambush him. He kills two of them (his first kills) but is about to die at the hands of the hated District 1 tribute Panache. As Panache drops dead, Maysilee steps out with a blow gun having just killed the toughest competitor in the field.
Maysilee tells Haymitch that she got separated during the blood bath in the beginning and is struggling to sustain herself. They use sponsor gifts and their combined resources to get her back up and running, Haymitch’s new plan involves finding the generator and blowing that up. He doesn’t tell Maysilee, and she gets frustrated by his lack of focus on winning. They bond though, and eventually the games are down to 4 contestants. Silkia (District 1 career), Wellie (young kid from District 6) and the two survivors from District 12. They find the generator but find that it also can’t be destroyed. Maysilee and Haymitch accept that the only way they’ll make a difference is defiance and they want to leave their mark. When they re-enter the area, Maysilee is attacked and killed by mutts and Haymitch is crushed by the grief/guilt.
He finds Wellie hiding in a tree, near death and he works to get her healthy enough to move with him. One night, a crying Silkia rests nearby. Rather than killing her, he drops food for her in a show of compassion. The next morning when he goes to get food, he comes back to find that Silkia had killed Wellie. A battle ensues with Haymitch being extremely wounded, but he lands the killing blow. Haymitch has won the Hunger Games.
The next month shows Haymitch being kept alive by doctors and imprisoned in a capital apartment until his victory tour. He constantly sees old Hunger Games on TV, specifically his attention is caught by District 12’s Lucy Gray Baird who he didn’t know anything about but instantly sees Lenore Dove in her. A meeting with Snow is filled with warnings, and while on his victory tour he sees that many of his actions were omitted or altered – no one knows about the sacrifices he made or his attempt at revolution. He plays the part of grateful victor before he gets to head home.
When he arrives, he immediately finds that his mom and brother had just been burned alive. Devasted, he goes to find Lenore Dove who was just let out of jail. They embrace and he gives her some candies that he had, her favorites. At this point, he realizes something is wrong – Snow had poisoned the candies and Lenore Dove dies. Haymitch is devasted, left with nobody else and he moves into his new house. Addicted to painkillers, he switches to alcohol and begins alienating everyone who loves him – including Katniss’s dad Burdock. He realizes that Lenore Dove was the rebel who was leading the uprising in District 12, but he doesn’t have any fire left to fight with.
Alright now I’m going to go through some takeaways from this. First off, this was an EXCELLENT read that probably ranks third in the series behind Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Passages here were downright devastating, and it’s unbelievable the amount of emotion Collins can generate with these stories. We always knew Haymitch as a miserable drunk, and this book outlines all the reasons why he is that way. All of his acts of defiance, I think the game makers kept him alive so that they could send a message to all those who want to oppose them. He won, and they still killed everyone that he loved.
I loved reading about Beetee, Mags, and Wiress. All three were apart of the resistance group that broke free from the arena in Catching Fire (RIP Mags) and this gave us all some information as to why. Beetee had his son killed by the Capital, Mags and Wiress were tortured into silence for helping Haymitch. Even Haymitch joining them for the resistance, makes all the sense in the world now. This book gave a lot more power to their story, and I’m so glad that it was told. I never understood Plutarch helping the resistance, but now I do. He was always helping, just doing it from the shadows.
The Lenore Dove stuff was fascinating, I really don’t think you’d understand it if you didn’t read Ballad and learned of Lucy Grey’s story. You knew something was off the whole time, and I wish they went more into her involvement with the resistance. However, they kept the mystery to her exactly as the Covery did with Lucy Grey. I knew she was going to die, and it still didn’t hurt any less. The epilogue here tells us that Haymitch ended up telling Peeta and Katniss his story after the end of Mockingjay. Katniss brings him goose eggs to hatch and raise, the same birds that Lenore Dove raised – great now I’m tearing up again.
I’m not sure where they will go next with the franchise. We’ve seen President Snow’s story, we’ve seen Haymitch’s story, we’ve seen Katniss’s story. There’s a ton of other games that they could write a book about, but knowing how it all started, how it all went, and how it finishes takes a bit of the oomph out of it. I would be interested in a sequel trilogy with older Katniss, and I would love a sequel to Lucy Gray’s story. No matter what, I will read anything that gets added to the Panem world (or any new franchise for that matter). This was excellent, my score is 5.0/5.0.
