The Hunger Games vs. Uglies

Happy Hunger Games Week, everyone!

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I'm participating in Sweet Green Tangerine's weekly book chat again. Today's prompt is: Share your favorite Dystopian novel. This is too perfect because I've been brainstorming this post idea since January and finally have an excuse to sit down and write it!

Now, I'm sure there will be quite a few Hunger Games-related link-ups today, but mine has a twist. I want to compare Suzanne Collins' series with another young adult dystopian series I've read and enjoyed: Uglies, by Scott Westerfeld.

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For the purposes of this post, I'm going to ignore the fourth book: Extras. It wasn't in the original trilogy, and it's so different from the first three in terms of characters and setting that I don't want to include it in this analysis. Don't worry; I didn't include any spoiler alerts. In fact, you probably won't even understand the following comparisons unless you've read both series. Here are the most major of the many parallelisms I found in the series:

Katniss Everdeen <—> Tally Youngblood

Gale/Peeta <—> David/Zane

(I could make an argument for either pairing,

but I think David is more similar to Peeta, and Zane is more like Gale.)

President Coin <—> Dr. Cable

District 13 <—> The Smoke

The Capitol citizens <—> New Pretties
The Capitol government <—> Special Circumstances

Even the trilogy itself is set up similarly. (Warning: This section contains very general plot summaries, so there could be spoiler alerts, though I'll do my best to keep it vague.) First book: Teenage girl forced to personally face the dark secrets of her dystopic world rebels with the help of her friends. Second book: Girl must live with the choice she made at the end of the first book, a love triangle develops, and the tyrannical government keeps a close eye on her. Third book: Everything goes to hell. Battle!

And in case you were wondering, the Uglies series came out first. (That was the first thing I looked up when I started noticing the similarities.) I'm really surprised they haven't made a movie out of it yet, but I'm sure when they do it will blow up just as big as Twilight or The Hunger Games.

So tell me, have you read either or both of these series? What do you think of my analysis? If you haven't read the Uglies, do you think you might? Are you going to see The Hunger Games this weekend?

P.S. — Speaking of dystopic fiction, Goodreads published a pretty cool timeline/infographic on their blog today about the history of dystopian books. Check it out!