The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

It does a good job for most of its length depicting the formative experiences and conflicting impulses of its protagonist. But at the end it seems to rush toward a preordained conclusion and doesn't really sell it that well. ( )

Overall a pretty good story, but I feel like I was expecting "more" out of this one. I will say I dislike Snow even more now. ( )

The Hunger Games is the book that made me an avid reader of novels since 2012.
I'm sad to say that the spark is gone when I read this one. Maybe I read enough of dystopian novels, maybe I have enough of YA dystopian genre....
They usually include romance, just like this one.
Nothing is surprising here anymore, even the decisions of every characters involved are predictable.
I'm still glad that I read this book.
I might read some spin-offs of THG just for old times' sake. ( )

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years prior to the Hunger Games of Katniss' time. Coriolanus Snow (who later becomes President Snow) is 18 years old and living in the Capitol. His family has fallen upon hard times following the war and the death of his parents. The 10th Hunger Games is about to take place, and he and some of his peers have been offered the opportunity to become mentors in the Games. Coriolanus is assigned the female tribute from District 12. Though initially disappointed, he eventually looks upon this as an opportunity to bring respect back to the Snow name, especially after meeting his tribute, the charismatic Lucy Gray Baird.

Though this book has a somewhat different feel than the original Hunger Games trilogy, it was nice to return to Suzanne Collins and the world of Panem. It was initially hard to reconcile the Snow of the original trilogy to the teenage Snow of this book. I wanted to hate him but I couldn't. He was actually a fairly decent guy once upon a time. The book is more or less divided into two halves, the first being the events of the 10th Hunger Games and the second being the events that occur afterwards. While I enjoyed revisiting the actual events of the Hunger Games again, they were much less refined and they lacked the creativity of the later Games. However, we did get to see how some of the qualities of the games evolved into what they were in later years.

Suzanne Collins tried to make Snow appear more humane by incorporating the relationship between he and Lucy Gray. I bought into this up to a point. But I didn't care for the second half of the book nearly as much as the first, and I really didn't like the way his character evolved almost overnight. It felt too sudden and choppy and unrealistic, and while I didn't exactly dislike the ending, I didn't like the way Collins fleshed it out to get there. It just felt unfulfilling.

I didn't dislike this book. It's hard to write a prequel that lives up to its original series, and I don't feel that this one necessarily deserved some of the bad reviews that it got. There were parts that were lacking, but I did enjoy it for the most part. ( )

I really want to dislike the Hunger Games series, but I can't put them down. I love a good, dystopian tale full of twists and turns. It had been many years since I read the original series so it took me a while to remember who Coriolanus would be later on. The tale covers the early Hunger Games and the changes that were employed to generate interest in them out in the districts. Coriolanus is a high school senior. HIs family has fallen on hard times during the war and he is raised by an older cousin and his grandmother. They live on their good name, but often go hungry. Coriolanus falls in love with the tribute he is assigned to, who is much like our later heroine Katniss. Coriolanus is set up numerous times by the Gamemaster and discovers how easily he can kill and betray others to defend himself. ( )