Not here for your entertainment: on THE HUNGER GAMES

Living in the totalitarian post-apocalyptic state of Panem, the setting of Suzanne Collins' HUNGER GAMES trilogy, improves marginally after you turn 18. You still don't get to vote, thanks to a long-ago uprising that converted the country into 13 districts that orbit an all-powerful Capitol district, and depending on whether you live in one of the richer or poorer districts your day-to-day life might be pretty hard. But at least you don't have to fight a bunch of other teenagers to the death on live TV! That's the gist of the Hunger Games, the annual event purported to mark the uprising, in which two "tributes" from each of 12 districts are taken to the Capitol and forced to kill each other for sport. Sort of like the Killer Olympics if all the contestants were drawn from youth-favoring sports like gymnastics or swimming. How Roman!

We the readers experience the Hunger Games through contestant Katniss Everdeen, of District 12 (mine country, one of the poorest). Katniss' name wasn't drawn originally, but she volunteers to spare her 12-year-old sister Primrose from the Games, betting on the fact that her years of hunting illegally to feed and support her mother and Prim after their father was killed in a mining accident would afford her a better chance when it came to surviving in the Games arena and (if necessary) killing another contestant.

Like Harry Potter, Katniss is the product of circumstance, pulled into this barbaric ritual by chance, who becomes a flashpoint for other people in Panem to recognize just how monstrous the reality they've been accepting really is. Surely, Voldemort would not have just gone away had baby Harry Potter perished, and the degree to which Katniss becomes a figurehead  But there's no "Boy Who Lived" magic around Katniss. She goes into the Games seeing through all the fanfare, unable to enjoy the attention, and convinced that she will be dead sooner or later -- probably knocked off by some of the better fed and trained tributes, or even her own fellow District 12 tribute, baker's son Peeta Mellark. Although she regards him fondly for once giving her bread from his family's trash heap, Katniss distrusts Peeta thoroughly, and more so when she discovers his strategy for the Games is to make everyone believe he's in love with her.

And that's the surprise at the heart of THE HUNGER GAMES -- a trenchant and stinging critique of reality TV, disguised as YA survivalist fiction (or a totalitarian torture-adventure, if you prefer). While the citizens of Panem would probably vote to abolish the Hunger Games if they could vote, and mourn the children -- let's not even call them teenagers anymore -- who go, they all tune in to the annual event as if it's a combination of the World Series and the Super Bowl. (Not that there are professional sports in the post-apocalypse.) It's not established for sure, but one supposes the Capitol has adapted to cater to this interest by airing interviews with each player, featuring pre-Games makeovers and costumes, and -- later -- by flashing daily memorials to all the tributes who have fallen during the games, while the few contestants who are left hope the others aren't watching for them.

As Katniss prepares for the Hunger Games, she thinks back to previous "episodes" she's seen and the strategies that helped previous "players" "win" the Games. Make yourself vulnerable gathering supplies at the start, or make yourself scarce? Form alliances, or play alone knowing that they'll end? Complicating her choices is the ability of "viewers" to send her aid -- medical supplies or food, for example -- if she plays to their sympathies in some way, adding an additional unreal layer to an already surreal situation. It gives her no solace to be reminded, as Katniss is frequently, that her mother and sister can see every injury she sustains during the Games. If she pretends she's in love with Peeta too, will that give her any chance of survival (in a situation where even a little advantage is significant) or just make her last few days on earth disingenuous as well as dangerous?

The winner of the annual Hunger Games gets a PR tour, a paid-for house and freedom from want for the rest of her life, but will always be known to the victims' families as the one who made it out at the expense of everyone else. And, as becomes clear deeper into the series, the champion is trotted out to justify each year's Games, the unwilling success of one traded on for the glory of all. No wonder Haymitch, the previous District 12 champion assigned to mentor Katniss and Peeta, is a drunken mess.

The high-contrast horror of the Hunger Games (inspired, Collins has said, by watching Iraq war footage, although a better parallel might be the child soldiers of Africa) makes the short-lived CBS reality show "Kid Nation" look like "Captain Kangaroo." And to the best of my knowledge no one is yet forcing people to participate in the various humiliations of reality TV. But as a mechanism that's built to shock, it works. At one point in the Games, Katniss forms an alliance she doubts will even help her with a 12-year-old from District 11, simply out of pity because the girl reminds her of her sister, with predictably tragic results. We don't learn a huge amount about how the Panem rulers keep all the other districts in line, which I see as a nod toward the fact that our narrator probably wouldn't know that -- certainly not as she prepares to travel to the Capitol for the first time. Still, something about Katniss' "performance" shakes the system loose, or at least loose enough to throw the future of the Hunger Games in doubt -- maybe the best news to the people watching at home, who may actually be hungry, and have no hope.