Then you get the story: a group of teenagers fight to the death to get one of the twenty spots in University, where a degree will get them a good job and lift their families out of poverty. I see how jacket artist Sammy Yuen used elements from the story to create the cover, but seriously, anyone else take a look at this and get a sense of deja vu? That being said, you get a book like Joelle Charbonneau’s The Testing and realize publishers and authors aren’t even trying to distinguish themselves from The Hunger Games anymore. Similarly, to say a book is like The Hunger Games just because of certain elements is to discount the originality of these other writers and their influences. To compare any kick ass heroine to Katniss Everdeen discounts the depth of Katniss’s experiences, a level of emotional trauma, of raw, absolutely raw, honesty that I have yet to experience in any of these other dystopian YA trilogies. Often, the comparison of these trilogies to The Hunger Games is a disservice both to the new trilogy and to Suzanne Collins’ work. It’s almost as if authors and publishers want to cash in on a trend before badly written erotica takes over the market. Love triangle? Check, unless the author decides she’s too cool for love triangles and fans proudly trumpet the absence of such. And not just any type of dystopian YA trilogy. Ever since The Hunger Gamesmade it big, publishers have been churning out one dystopian YA trilogy after another.
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