The Hunger Games is an intelligent read

I loved this book.  It kept me captivated to the last page.  I would agree with other’s reviews that if it has a flaw, it’s that it ends too abruptly.  I found it interesting to contemplate the larger meanings in the book.  I wondered if Ms. Collins was asking us to examine how far we, as a society,  would go for the sake of entertainment.  At one point in the book, Katniss (the main character and our heroine) observed how the citizens of the Capital would react when a tribute was killed; they remarked on what they were doing, and not on the gruesome way the child died at all, or the fact that it was only a child.  I also wondered if the author was reminding us to not become complacent in our duties as citizens.  This book showed very clearly what can happen when a government head is given too much power, and its citizens are more concerned with trivialities than realities.  I love the contrast Ms. Collins makes between the sophisticated, wealthy, “intelligent” Capital citizens, and the citizens of the lowly districts.  For all their sophistication and technology in the Capital, they had become detached from their own humanity, evident in the freakish fashion styles they adopted in body and hair colorings that Katniss finds so odd. 
I very much enjoyed that this book, although written as a young adult novel, was not condescending or simplistic in its story lines and themes carried in the book.  It was anything but cliché; it’s a refreshing change from the predictable novel.  The characters were well-developed, and Ms. Collins does a great job in fleshing-out Katniss and Peeta into real, believable, endearing characters, with strengths and weaknesses.  I am always disappointed in some novels to discover, when a character suffers tragedy, that I could care less.  There is none of this in The Hunger Games, or its sequel, Catching Fire.  I will be anxiously waiting for the release of the third book.