Hunger Games Leaves this Mind Starving for Sanity

Admittedly I am coming late to the 'game' so to speak with regard to reading and reviewing 'The Hunger Games' but I feel strongly about my opinions here and thought that it deserved my recount.  First, I had no idea what the premise of the famed trilogy was and no I don't live under a rock.  I didn't pay much attention to the movie trailers and although 2 of my 5 kids have read or are reading them I thought I would just take them on myself and find out what all the hype was about.  And so I did. . .


When I realized this was a story of children fighting to their deaths I was completely appalled.  What sane person could think to write about such violent attacks and killings of children, in the voice of a child.  No the person who wrote these books is not well.  The descriptive pictures painted of mutant beings, mind games, torture, haunting nightmares that last a life time sending them to insanity and more of the like were horrifying enough - adding that they were carried out by children killing and being killed for sport is completely irrational.  All at the hand of adults who set them up, planned the attacks, built supreme creatures for these children to contend with, be slaughtered by or eaten alive.  Is that the message we're sending the young minds of today?  Isn't there enough real world despair to read about?  You want to know more about starvation, hunger, and children struggling for survival take on a living, breathing cause.  None of which I will mention because I am not advocating for one cause over another, you can do your own homework. The 'games' as depicted meant for sport and entertainment, I did not find entertaining.  


To take it one step further and darker the author here adds in a twisted pregnancy element - so now we are into killing off the unborn as a result of ritualistic sport?  Regardless of my position on abortion rights and the fact that it is a book and even within the book the pregnancy was a fabrication, it was an element that the author thought through putting words to paper.  Think about that.


To think that this has become best selling movie material makes me believe strongly that we have run out of ideas.  We have already remade the remakes thrice over and this story is not really all that different than that of the Romans except that this 'writer' (and I use the term loosely) has used children as the prey.  What's next?


Was this the workings of an imaginative mind or one of a sick and depraved individual?