Search found 2 matches: Suzanne Collins

TheDenizen wrote:The writer of the Hunger Games book claims she had never heard of Battle Royale until after she finished her novel...but just about every review I've read (of the book, not the movie) has commented on the unusually high number of similarities between the two stories. Even if the similarities were just completely coincidental and Suzanne Collins is being truthful about her lack of exposure to BR, the fact remains that it's essentially the same thing. BR was full of gory violence, and HG is not. Hence, I can't see how HG will be anything to get too excited about.

The Hunger Games has been criticized for its similarities to the 1999 novel Battle Royale. Although Collins maintains that she "had never heard of that book until [her] book was turned in," [u]The New York Times reports that "the parallels are striking enough that Collins’s work has been savaged on the blogosphere as a baldfaced ripoff," but that "there are enough possible sources for the plot line that the two authors might well have hit on the same basic setup independently."[/b] (Stephen) King noted that the reality TV "badlands" were similar to Battle Royale, as well as The Running Man and The Long Walk. The NY Times, John Green, In a review for The New York Times, John Green wrote that the novel was "brilliantly plotted and perfectly paced", and that "the considerable strength of the novel comes in Collins's convincingly detailed world-building and her memorably complex and fascinating heroine." However, he also noted that sometimes the book does not realize the allegorical potential that the plot has to offer and that the writing "described the action and little else". He also pointed out that the premise of the novel was "nearly identical" to Battle Royale.