From the publication of the first volume in 2008, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series was an enormous hit, later adapted as hugely successful films. Inevitably, a prequel was spawned, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), now followed by Sunrise on the Reaping, set about a quarter of a century before the events of the original trilogy.

The books’ success partly lay in Collins’s skilful refashioning of an ancient story, the myth of the Minotaur, which she placed in a futuristic world, giving agency to the weak to overthrow the powerful. But it also came from her close attention to the effects of social media and reality television, as she examined the line between the authentic self and pretence, and how narratives can be manipulated for advantage. In this new book Collins returns to these familar themes with the story of the likable Haymitch Abernathy. Readers have met him already, as a mentor to the original trilogy’s beloved heroine, Katniss Everdeen.

The Hunger Games are a violent entertainment designed to keep the country of Panem in a state of permanent subservience. Every year, teenage “tributes” are chosen by lot to take part. Thrust into the role of child soldiers, in a giant arena that functions like a panopticon, they must battle against each other, until only one survives. Collins’s interest in media pervades the text: at the “reaping”, where tributes are selected, a boy runs away, and is shot in the head; the resulting chaos is edited out from the broadcast. Everyone grows up skilled in the mechanisms of public relations, since knowing how to manipulate your appearance might help you survive.

At the top of Panem’s hierarchy broods the monstrous President Snow, riddled with disease and vampiric in his lust for young blood. Underneath him are the glittering, empty-headed inhabitants of the Capitol, followed by ordinary citizens in strictly delineated districts down to scummy District 12, from which both Katniss and Haymitch hail. These class boundaries may seem artificial, but they underscore the novel’s notions of power, and allow for some blunt satire of fashion and luxury: a Capitol woman has real cat ears sewn on to her head, while those in District 12 live in poverty.

The wholesomeness of District 12 is a contrast with the Capitol’s decadence, and Haymitch appears a stereotypical bumpkin. He works hard for his Ma, looks after his kid brother, and bootlegs liquor to earn extra cash. His love for his singer sweetheart, Lenore Dove, is the book’s emotional touchstone. The year is the 50th anniversary of the games, so twice as many tributes as usual are chosen. And it’s hard luck for Haymitch, who draws the short straw. The games begin once more, in all their viciousness.

Expecting to be trained up to fight, Haymitch also finds stirrings of revolution: some within the Capitol seek an end to the games, and he is drawn into their machinations. He thus faces a double task: to win, and to subvert the entire enterprise. Since we know the games continue, we also know that he won’t succeed in the latter part. But that doesn’t detract from the suspense, since the reader wants to know what seeds of sedition are lain down for the future.

Collins is an excellent writer, and there are moments of surprising lyricism, which help to leaven the grimness. In a literary touch, Haymitch remembers a William Blake poem, Ah! Sun-flower, reminding us of both radicalism, and the importance of nature; the sunflower necklaces worn by tributes are both symbols and, since they are fashioned from explosives, agents of destruction.

Classical references abound. The man who designs the parades for the games is Incitatus, after Caligula’s horse, and in the monstrous arena, which parodies the pastoral, Collins employs a trope from Latin poetry: the locus amoenus, where a pleasant place becomes a site of violence. She also plays with doppelgangers, increasing the sense of uncanniness: one District 12 tribute, the brilliantly sarcastic Maysilee, must leave her twin sister behind; another, once dead, is replaced by a living body double.

I have always found the books’ attitude to underage violence and the deaths of children difficult, even if it follows a long literary tradition. The tributes are subjected to physical and mental degradation: Sunrise on the Reaping can feel more like A Clockwork Orange than a novel for 12 and up. In a particularly cruel touch, a father is asked to act as mentor to his own son, teaching him the skills to survive, while knowing that he will almost certainly die. The stench of death is everywhere; and the tone of the whole is tragic rather than triumphant. Nothing reaches the heights of exhilaration of the first Hunger Games, but Sunrise on the Reaping contains enough both to snare new readers and to satisfy the most bloodthirsty fans.