I’ve been meaning to pick up this book for a while and after seeing it everywhere decided that now was the time.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
Bookshop.org | Goodreads | The StoryGraph | Amazon
It’s been a long time since I have read The Hunger Games trilogy but I remember being consumed by it, pouring over the pages desperate to see what happened next. When I heard that another book in the Hunger Games world was coming out I was excited, and then when I heard who it was about, I wasn’t sure about reading it. Of course, I then saw it everywhere as other readers dived into it, though sometimes I can’t read a popular book at its peak so I held off, then more recently the film came out and I was curious about the story so I just had to get it.
I have to say I thought I was going to find Snow vile from the start but admittedly he wasn’t too bad initially. It was actually really interesting to learn a bit more about the beginnings of the games, to see what impact the war had on the Capitol and even more so from the perspective of someone so integral to the games. Of course, as I got further and further into the story the signs started to show that he was turning into the ruthless and manipulative person that I remembered from the original trilogy.
In this book, as you know what the future holds for this character, it was more of an insight into what influences and events shape and change a person to make them who they are. This is a fascinating subject because at every decision Snow makes you wonder how much closer he is to turning into the villain we know. However, it did mean that, for me, there wasn’t the same all-consuming investment in the story, and at times it felt like a long book. At the points I did want him to come out on top it was for the benefit of Lucy Gray, but knowing that he did end up in such high regard in the Capitol meant that some of the scenes that could have been very tense lost momentum due to that existing knowledge.
This is going to sound terrible but even though of all the characters in the book Lucy Gray would be the one to root for, a bit of an outsider and with such a dazzling personality, I struggled to connect to her too. I think because even though she is in the story a lot of it is through Snow’s thoughts, when she is in the games we barely get to interact with her and she is more on the periphery of his story from that point, almost seen as an ideal rather than an actual person.
I also feel like the pacing is a bit strange in the story, it is not very fast-paced until the end, where a lot suddenly happens and I realised that there were not enough pages left to really get into it and then it ended. Until that point, it was a more drawn-out look at the choices Snow has made and the consequences of them and then he’s almost fast-tracked into bad guy territory with an encounter that I would have loved a little more of but left me a little confused. Don’t get me wrong I did enjoy this story and whilst it took me a bit to get through it, I did want to read to the end, but it wasn’t what I was expecting.
This prequel is very different in terms of energy than the original trilogy and doesn’t have the same kind of engaging action and characters that I felt invested in, but it is a very interesting look at the mindset behind the horrors of the Hunger Games.
everywhere-and-nowhere.com 