'Sunrise on the Reaping' (The Hunger Games, #0.5) by Suzanne Collins

 

This book is like a Rorschach test for fans ...

— Either Suzanne Collins wrote a second prequel book in 'The Hunger Games' universe as an easy franchise cash-grab (and yes, a movie adaptation of 'Sunrise on the Reaping' is in the works) OR, Suzanne Collins has been paying attention ever since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and chucked a January 6 insurrectionist hissy-fit, and has been mapping the writing-on-the-wall as America teeters towards fascism, with another prescient instalment of her YA Dystopian series that was originally inspired by the invasion of Iraq and America's insatiable love for reality television.

— Either books are inherently political and 'The Hunger Games' is a really clever argument in support of "just war" theory (an ethical framework to determine when it is permissible to go to war) and one of the most political-est books young people can read, OR books are pure entertainment and 'The Hunger Games' is just good schlocky fun, and anyway it's a rip-off of the 2000 Japanese movie 'Battle Royale' based on the 1999 novel of the same name by Koushun Takami that pipped 'The Hunger Games' (2008 publication) by 9-years.

— Either this prequel is illustrating a fine point that revolutions are not born, they're made. Or to quote the musical Hamilton; “Legacy. What is a legacy? It's planting seeds in a garden you never get to see," and though we saw the spark of the mockingjay by following Katniss' story and being given passing understanding of District 13 and how many people were involved in the rebellion and how long they'd been scheming ... 'Sunrise on the Reaping' is really delving into showing readers just how the foundations were laid, how rebels are pushed and moulded by violence. OR this was all just nostalgia-bait and fan-service, a literary 'Weekend at Bernie's' making ghoulish marionettes out of dearly beloved and deceased secondary characters from the series.

— Either Suzanne Collins repeatedly shows her hand and political views and it's not by coincidence how foresighted this book feels, or the entire series for that matter ... case-in-point; this book coming out as Israel has again resumed killing Palestinians in collective-punishment and to enact their larger ethnic-cleansing project (FYI: Israel’s war on Gaza is deliberately targeting children – new UN report ... oh, and total coinky-dink; Netanyahu’s testimony in corruption trial postponed due to Gaza war) OR ... no, that's not the case? Israel is not The Capitol. Netanyahu is no autocrat like Snow (Netanyahu is waging war on Gaza and on us – his ‘enemies within’. It’s the path to autocracy), "if we burn, you burn with us" can in no way be applied to politics of the Middle East and American geopolitics ... just, no?

Well, look, books are political - they have been since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1440 and made knowledge dissemination, y'know, a thing ... the fact that I'm a woman who was taught to read is in and of itself - a miracle of the modern-age, and if books weren't political then the Church would have kept them hoarded (and by golly they tried!) and for monks-eyes-only. This book is political, but to what extent is up to the individual.

I, personally, can't shake the fact that Suzanne Collins' near-mythological genesis story of this tale ties into American and allied aggression in Iraq, and the "just war" theory echoes everywhere in this day and age ... does Yemen have a right to defend itself? Do Palestinians? "We seek nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man: the right if you are attacked, to defend yourself," written on a mural in East Belfast, harkens back to The Troubles and now. And in Australia the Irish hip hop trio from West Belfast, Kneecap, just toured and teamed up with Indigenous artist Aretha Brown to "Defy the Occupation."

I also can't help but note the gift of silence that Suzanne Collins gives readers (then, and now) with each release. She doesn't do events, not even for releases - and not even for this one. She's no J.K. Rowling clawing for relevancy and trashing her reputation with fascistic and bigoted public rhetoric. There's no awkward Kafkaesque discovery of her religious underpinnings to the tale à la Stephenie Meyer's mormonism in 'Twilight'. The most Collins has said of a political nature is a repeat of her famous "flipping between the channels of war and reality-TV," and a fairly deep-dive interview with her long-time editor David Levithan in that 2018 New York Times article. We don't know if she's anti-Zionist or not. We don't know if she voted for Trump, or Harris - or at all. She let's the work speak for itself, knowing full well it is the aforementioned Rorschach test for readers. And I think that's challenging, and a little bit wonderful in this day and age.

For me, I loved this book. I think Collins threaded a very fine needle, keeping Haymitch Abernathy's end in sight as she wrote his genesis and that of the rebellion. I gasped, I bawled my eyes out, I got suckered into liking characters I knew were doomed to death ... I felt losses I'd already experienced, anew. This is a master-storyteller, not necessarily through astonishingly clever and good writing but pretty darn good pacing, plotting and characterisation. Yes; some of that plot became a little mechanically mediocre and convenient towards the end (last 50 or so pages, went a little wonky - understandable as she approaches an inevitability all readers were braced for) ...

I do think that if anything the truth of this book’s genesis maybe lies in a little of both worlds of commercialisation and politics. I see a lot of ‘Star Wars: Rogue One’ to this story, the 2016 blockbuster prequel to the original ‘Star Wars’ universe that explains how the rebels got their hands on the plans of the Death Star in order to target its in-built vulnerabilities.

Interestingly a big focus in that story, is on a young woman who is a reluctant fence-sitter at first but eventually comes around to the idea of rebellion. In fact, one of the most famous lines from the film is; "Rebellions are built on hope." 

Interestingly and just as with ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’, ‘Rogue One’ isn’t a kittens-and-rainbows happy-ending. It can’t be, because of what we know about what is to come in this universe and the story we’ve already been told. Schrödinger's cat is dead, so to speak, and we know that.

Much like Collins, it’s also a film that plays and pays fan-service, delightedly so.

It’s not surprising that ‘Rogue One’ is my favourite of the new Star Wars stories, and that I loved ‘Sunrise on the Reaping.’ Maybe for the same reasons, I loved them both; when you’re writing stories supporting just war theory and how messy revolutions can be, it’s not a bad thing to put a little sting in the tail and make them hurt, a little.

But I loved this. It resonated and moved me, and that's the Rorschach test that matters.

4/5

'The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires That Run the World' by Oliver Milman

 

From the BLURB: 

How would we live if insects no longer existed? 

When is the last time you were stung by a wasp? Or were followed by a cloud of midges? Or saw a butterfly? All these normal occurrences are becoming much rarer. A groundswell of research suggests insect numbers are in serious decline all over the world - in some places by over 90%. 

The Insect Crisis explores this hidden emergency, arguing that its consequences could even rival climate change. We rely on insect pollination for the bulk of our agriculture, they are a prime food source for birds and fish, and they are a key strut holding up life on Earth, especially our own. 

In a compelling and entertaining investigation spanning the globe, Milman speaks to the scientists and entomologists studying this catastrophe and asks why these extraordinary creatures are disappearing. Part warning, part celebration of the incredible variety of insects, this book highlights why we need to wake up to this impending environmental disaster.

***

The Insect Crisis: The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World by Oliver Milman is a nonfiction book that published in March 2022, and I listened to the audiobook narrated by Liam Gerrard.

An absolutely phenomenal read, about 'the plight of things that scuttle at our feet and hover in our gardens.'

I knew there was an insect crisis, but I didn't know how bad it was until this book. The one you hear the most about is the bee, and largely because its extinction affects human's access to honey and pretty pollinated flowers - and this is discussed in the book. The same way that the extinction of large and cute mammals (from polar-bears to pandas, koalas, and the world's last male northern white rhino that died in 2018) get good PR because there's a tangible face to put to their crisis ... insects and entomology struggle to rally support for their crisis that would have far greater and actual devastating impacts on humanity. Milman argues, the loss of the white rino - while tragic - doesn't have an impact on the daily-life of humans the same way that loss of many insect species would ... "You get rid of flies? You get rid of chocolate," said Erica McAlister, a senior curator at the Natural History Museum in London. Flies pollinate carrots, peppers, mangoes, many fruit trees and - chocolate. And they are hardier against cold-climates than bees.

Throughout the book Milman argues and highlights this crisis that is at once happening and devastating, and hard to quantify. "Counting the books while the library burns," is how he puts it - since there are anywhere from 5 to 10 million insect species in the world; impossible to study and catalogue, and therefore - unknowable when they die off ... he gives the example of the 2019 bushfires in Australia, where "billions of invertebrates were lost, with some models suggesting potentially trillions."

He does a brilliant job of quantifying the unquantifiable, like; a scientist in the jungles of Brazil who used to hang a white sheet in the rainforest and backlight it with a torch to show how many insects gathered (this is "manual collecting") and in the 70s these photos would show the sheet so blackened with many insects you couldn't even tell they were hanging on a backdrop ... but now? The sheet is clearly visible, only spotty with insects. The same way another citizen scientist used to drive his car down a certain stretch of road at night, and then photograph the insects splattered on the windshield; this manual collecting also harkens back to the "back in my day," crowd who can remember family road-trips that involved frequent pit-stops to clear the windshield of bugs ... not anymore.

Milman also does a good job of explaining the culprits to this crisis - humans, always humans. Monsanto and mono-farming culture (one entomologist suggests eliminating farms and just bolstering home gardens would do more for the environment and replenishing insects; and he's not wrong ... farms could help reverse damage they're doing by planting a border of wild flowers around all of their fields but - they won't, because most farms are corporate entities now, growing unsustainably for corporate greed.) Monsanto is a plight on humanity and the damage they've done is irreversible, alongside the greed and corruption within governments that allow them to run roughshod over the environment and the health of human-beings (Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil reversing laws against certain pesticide use has been catastrophic ... imagine what Trump is reversing too.)

And - what is lost when we lose insects? Their fine webbing of biodiversity, and tugging to break one thread will have a devastating domino-effect (just consider how many birds and mammals rely on insects for food-source) ... but more than that; imagine children growing up in a world, where they've never seen a butterfly (the monarch butterfly is expected to be on the brink in the next 30-years, it's happening and there's no stopping it).

'The tragedy will be how impoverished we will become, environmentally, spiritually, morally.' Or as entomologist David Wagner puts it; 'Our children will have a diminished world. That's what we are giving them.' Already in Australia, my nephews don't know what a Christmas beetle is; though they used to live in our households and gardens in the hotter months ... I used to find and rescue so many ladybugs as a child, carrying them to leaves on the tip of my finger - now, I can't remember the last time I saw one.

A diminished world indeed.

The audiobook is also *fabulous* - narrated by Liam Gerrard, who does a plethora of accents for all the entomologists quoted from all over the world (Australian, American, Brazilian, Chines ...) it really gave the book a feeling of; chorus of calamity.

5/5