Books Like The Hunger Games: 9 Dystopias That Still Hit Just as Hard
Deadly arenas, reluctant symbols and rebellions that cost everything
Every few years a new wave of readers discovers The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and comes away slightly stunned that a YA novel from 2008 reads this sharply now. Katniss Everdeen volunteering for a televised fight to the death is the hook, but what keeps the book alive is everything around the arena: a Capitol that turns children's deaths into entertainment, propaganda wielded like a weapon, a heroine who becomes a symbol she never asked to be, and a love triangle that is really an argument about survival versus hope. It is fast, furious and far smarter than its imitators.
And there were a lot of imitators. The good news is that the dystopia boom also produced genuinely great books, and the tradition Collins drew on runs deep. Whether you want another deadly competition, another spark-of-rebellion arc, or something older and stranger from the same family tree, these are the nine we recommend most often at Ever After Books. We have ordered them roughly from closest match to boldest departure, so you can pick by how far from Panem you feel like travelling.
What to read after The Hunger Games
Legend by Marie Lu
In a militarised future Los Angeles, the Republic's star prodigy is sent to hunt its most wanted criminal, and both teenagers discover their government has been lying to them their whole lives. Legend has the propaganda themes and the enemies-to-allies electricity of Collins at her best, told in alternating viewpoints that keep the pace absolutely blistering. The most purely exciting book on this list.
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Divergent by Veronica Roth
Tris lives in a Chicago divided into factions by personality, and her initiation into Dauntless is as brutal as any arena: knife throwing, fear simulations, rankings where the bottom get cut. It shares The Hunger Games' fascination with what oppressive systems do to identity, with a heroine remaking herself through sheer stubbornness. Less political than Collins, more of a training-gauntlet adrenaline ride.
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An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
A slave spying for the resistance and the empire's finest soldier-in-training collide at a military academy where the commandant makes President Snow look gentle. Tahir writes oppression with real teeth, and the Trials at the story's centre deliver that deadly-competition dread. It is the pick for readers who want higher fantasy stakes and are ready for something a shade darker.
Find An Ember in the Ashes at Ever After Books
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
Mare's world is divided by blood: Silvers with superhuman powers rule, Reds serve. When she turns out to have an impossible ability, she is hidden in plain sight as a lost Silver princess while feeding secrets to the rebellion. It blends the Hunger Games caste rage with palace intrigue and a betrayal that genuinely stings. For readers who wanted more court, more scheming, more romance.
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Scythe by Neal Shusterman
Humanity has conquered death, so population is culled by professional Scythes, and two teenagers are forced to apprentice as reapers. Where Collins interrogates spectacle and war, Shusterman interrogates institutional power and what happens when the people holding it start to enjoy it. Thoughtful, morally knotty and surprisingly funny, with an apprenticeship rivalry that turns lethal.
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The Maze Runner by James Dashner
Thomas wakes in a glade full of boys with no memories, surrounded by a vast shifting maze patrolled by monsters, and the whole thing is being watched. It scratches the experiment-as-entertainment itch from a mystery-box angle: less politics than Collins, far more what-is-actually-going-on momentum. Short chapters, constant cliffhangers, and a premise that hooks reluctant readers instantly.
Find The Maze Runner at Ever After Books
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
The infamous Japanese novel about a class of students forced by their government to fight to the death on an island, published nearly a decade before Katniss. It is adult, graphic and unflinching where Collins cuts away, but its anger at a state that murders children for control is exactly the same anger. For grown-up fans who want to see the idea at full brutality.
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Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
At sixteen everyone receives an operation that makes them pretty, and Tally cannot wait, until she meets people who refused. Westerfeld swaps the arena for a quieter horror: a society that pacifies rather than punishes, and a heroine repeatedly forced to choose between comfort and truth. Its themes of image, conformity and manufactured happiness feel more relevant now than in 2005.
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The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey
An alien invasion arrives in waves designed to make humans distrust each other, and teenage Cassie is trying to keep one promise while children are trained as soldiers. It carries the Hunger Games' hardest question (who is weaponising the young, and why) into survival thriller territory. Tense, paranoid and genuinely affecting, with a twist that lands beautifully. Of everything here, it best captures that specific Collins feeling of never being sure who you are allowed to trust.
Find The 5th Wave at Ever After Books
Keep the streak going
May the odds of your next great read be ever in your favour. Let What Should I Read Next? match you to the right rebellion, keep score on your TBR list, and browse the full Science Fiction collection for every dystopia on our shelves.