Suzanne Collins decided a few years ago that she suddenly wanted to write a couple of preqeuls to the Hunger Games trilogy. As a result of these being published, I’ve recently done a Hunger Games reread (read my reviews of The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay) to catch myself up on all things Katniss and crew before delving into all things before Katniss and Crew – in this particular instance Coriolanus “Coryo” Snow or as we know him currently – President Snow.
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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows the story of Snow 64 years before he was the political leader and main villain of the original trilogy as he mentors the charismatic District 12 tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, in the 10th Hunger Games whilst also trying to restore his family’s status by ensuring her victory.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes plot – 3.5/5
I would say for the first 100 pages of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes I was interesting and understood the purpose of the plot. I knew who our main character was and what his purpose was. From then on though, it all fell apart quite a bit for me.
As I described above, this is all about Snow trying to win guide his tribute Lucy Baird to win the Hunger Games whilst also trying to navigate the politics of those that sit way above him in the system. After establishing this, the rest of the plot starts to get a little bit vague and loses direction a little bit with a very odd ending final third that I genuinely feel like Collins tacked on as she’d not written enough words yet.
Without spoiling any of the actual plot moments, the first third feels like it you know where things are going and then the second two thirds don’t give you enough information about the build up in the first third an decide they’re going to go with a completely different direction instead. I know this is essentially echoing my second paragraph here but I just wanted to get across how many times I literally verbalised “what?!” as I was reading and listening to this book.
My biggest issue is I’m honestly not sure at what point this book shows us how Snow becomes the baddy that he is in the future books.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes characters – 3.75/5
The main story is between Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Baird – two people from different walks of life (nothing new in this sense). It starts off as a fairly obvious “rich guy interacts with slave girl too much” sort of narrative which was probably the best part of the book.
However, the plot itself then takes a massive turn which essentially changes the characters you’re focusing on and then the final third was just a big muddle of I don’t even know what.
As I said at the end of the plot section, I didn’t come out of this book with any better idea as to what turned Snow into the character we see him as in the original trilogy. In the book, if anything, he’s a good guy almost entirely throughout – almost to a fault.
And then Lucy Baird seemed to just give off a slightly annoying aura of confidence which just made me suspicious of her throughout the entire book.
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes final rating – 3.5/5
The start of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes started off just how you’d hope a Hunger Games book to start – world building, lore building and a strong introduction to the character’s motives. However, after a strong first quarter, the rest of the book fell into both easy and confusing plot choices and a character dynamic that I could never really work out. About halfway through there’s a big switch up which feels like a separate book in itself and it all climaxes with a very odd ending. It felt underbaked, fairly unthought-out and left me feeling like I’d wasted my time with this particular prequel.
