[scrapking]

I apologise if my comments repeat others. I would normally scan the comments to make sure they're not redundant, but a few messages in there were already spoilers so I can't afford it as I'm at the midpoint of the second book.

I have found the books to be enjoyable and engaging, but poorly written and/or edited. The perspective (first-person, present tense) was very difficult to get into for me, and felt like it was used to mimick the immediacy of an IM conversation. The story evolved as if a sports play-by-play announcer was talking about their day.

Editing errors abounded. The books have "Peackeepers" and "Gamemakers", but I read at least one instance of "Peacemakers" in the first book without any suggestion that this was a third profession to aspire to.

Mysteriously, for the first 7 chapters or so, the final meal of the day is (without exception that I noted) referred to as "supper". After that it changes to "dinner", and is referred to by every character that way for the next several dozen chapters (with a single exception that I noted). No explanation is offered for this change. I know some people use the two words interchangeably, but it's ubiquitous for chapters at a time, then changes and the change is suddenly ubiquitous for chapters at a time. Bizarre.

In one scene Effie is described as sponsoring her young charges in the games, I believe it was in the first-person narration rather than in spoken words, and it's a poor choice of words given "sponsors" have another (already established by that point) definition in the book.

I could go on (I've been annotating up a storm as I read, if anyone's interested in other observations along these lines), but suffice it to say I've found quite a number and those are just a few off the top of my head (I'm at work and my Kobo's at home).

However, I still really enjoy the worldbuilding, characters, and story so I intend to read it to the end. I had originally planned to read just the first book (as I wanted to read it before the movie came out), and then go back to Harry Turtledove's so-called "Southern Victory" books. However, I'm instead going to read the Hunger Games books through to completion before reading anything else, as I'm worried I'll have a hard time getting back into the writing style if I step out of it for a time. It took me until chapter 5 before I was able to look past it the first time. My girlfriend, BTW, had the exact same experience as it took her 4-5 chapters to get past the writing style, but she went on to love the books despite it all.