The Ballad of Songbirds And Snakes

By: Suzanne Collins

Rating

★★★

One of the first books I was completely hooked on was Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games and the following two in the series. One of my biggest accomplishments is that I finished reading all three of the books before the first movie even came out (sad flex, I know). I spent all four movies excitedly swatting at my dad (who very often regretted taking me to the movies of books I had read) because of how excited I was. When I found out that a prequel was coming out about a teenager president Snow I was so excited to be able to go back into the world of Panem.

The Panem we have come to know during the 74th Hunger Games is all riches and glam show by the people and the city it's self. In this book we are brought back in time to the 10th annual Hunger Games and are shown a broken and crumbling version of the capital that we are used to. With the War only ten years behind them the Capital is still trying to gets its self back together. The Hunger Games views are down and the Capital wants to change that so they decide that they are going to add mentors for the Tributes, and who better then bright high school children who were being graded and the mentor with the winning Tribute would get a scholarship.

Coriolanus Snow is chosen as one of the mentors and is assigned the female Tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird. The mentors try to come up with ideas to get more people to watch the games. Before the tributes go into the arena they will be interviewed and shown to the viewers which has never been done before. People watching can now bet on who will survive and send money to the mentors to send gifts into the arena. It was really interesting hearing school children coming up with ideas that we see in action in the following books.

Throughout the book Coriolanus is dealing with the fact that his family is starting to not be seen as high-ranking as he thinks they should be. He lives with his grandmother and cousin Tigris (who we see again helping Katniss and the resistance in Mockingjay) after his mother died during the birth of his deceased sibling and not soon later his General father died in the war.

Snows interactions with Lucy was where he was most human but even then his internal thoughts showed that he really didn't care about her but only about how he was being viewed and what his grade would be. Once we finally get into the games there is only 15 Tributes left. Lucy eventually wins the games and is sent home while Snow gets caught for tampering with the games and is forced to enter the Peacekeepers or be arrested for treason. He joins the Peacekeepers and requests to go to District 12 and finds Lucy and her whole family.

The last third of the book is about Snow being in the Peacekeepers and his relationship with Lucy. The two begin to date and Snow goes out on leave on the weekends to see her and go on little adventures. Snow finds out that his friend is conspiring with the Resistance and he ends up killing one of the Resistance members and the Districts mayors daughter. Fearing he will be caught, and the Mayor threating Lucy because he thinks she killed his daughter, they decide to flee to the woods and make a plan to live out of the districts on their own.

Snow was insufferable during most of the book and his "snow lands on top" motto became very annoying and repetitive. Any inconvenience or not acceptable look from a teacher or class mate and he had a whole internal monolog about how he hated when people pitied him, his family was powerful and was still on top. Occasionally he had an almost human reaction to something and immediately made himself not care and went back to being an egotistical ass.

I wish we got chapters with Lucy's point of view of the reaping, the games themselves, and her getting back to the Districts as a Victor. I liked a lot of this book but sadly most of it had me annoyed and made me want to slap the shit out of Snow. I know this is supposed to be the origin story of Snow and show how he became the tyrannical president of Panem that we know and hate but he already started out an asshole with horrible views and ideas. Seeing the new ideas and how the games started was interesting and the fact that they were actually thought of from children, the same age of the one that were reaped every year, was crazy to find out.

Altogether this was a good book and I definitely enjoyed it but it just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. It might be the fact that the actual games weren't really the main point of the book or that Snow was just so unlikeable. If you've read all the books and are really invested in the story then definitely give this a read but if you haven't then I don't think it will be that enjoyable. I WILL be watching the movie when it comes out and I'm pretty excided to see how it all comes together.

Did you like this book? Was it what you were hoping for? Are you going to watch the movie? Let's talk about it bellow!