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redefiningrachel's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Graphic: Confinement, Alcoholism, Violence, Death, Blood, Alcohol, Drug use, Addiction, Child death, Murder, Grief, Gore, War, and Death of parent
Moderate: Toxic friendship, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Animal cruelty, Toxic relationship, Abandonment, Animal death, Mental illness, and Police brutality
midnightverde's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Moderate: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Alcohol, Cannibalism, Police brutality, Terminal illness, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Toxic relationship, Domestic abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Colonisation, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Classism, Death, Gaslighting, Hate crime, Infidelity, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Grief, Gun violence, Vomit, Murder, Stalking, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic friendship, Violence, and War
_dina's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Suicidal thoughts, War, Drug use, Gun violence, Violence, Cannibalism, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Child death, Physical abuse, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Medical content, Grief, Addiction, Gaslighting, Blood, Alcoholism, Death, Classism, Bullying, and Alcohol
megan_is_aa's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Classism, Child abuse, Child death, and Confinement
Moderate: Death, Medical trauma, Gun violence, Forced institutionalization, and Murder
Minor: Violence, Drug use, Cannibalism, Addiction, Murder, and Alcohol
readingwithkaitlyn's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Child abuse, Gore, Murder, Classism, Body horror, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Police brutality, and Violence
Moderate: Drug use, Medical content, Suicide attempt, Torture, Suicidal thoughts, Drug abuse, Medical trauma, Alcohol, War, Misogyny, and Addiction
Minor: Vomit, Infidelity, Excrement, Miscarriage, Racial slurs, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death of parent, Terminal illness, Confinement, Cannibalism, Kidnapping, Grief, and Alcoholism
jbird_reads's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Violence, Toxic relationship, Emotional abuse, Death, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Death of parent, War, Child death, Cannibalism, and Suicidal thoughts
Moderate: Addiction, Vomit, Sexual violence, Gun violence, Torture, and Grief
Minor: Alcohol
ironseaweed's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Alcohol, Death, and Cannibalism
Don’t read if you don’t have a strong stomach!!!erikalv97's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Murder, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, Emotional abuse, Death, Gun violence, Gaslighting, Violence, Classism, and Child abuse
Moderate: Slavery, Cannibalism, Blood, Grief, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Death of parent, Bullying, Alcohol, Addiction, War, Toxic friendship, Ableism, and Toxic relationship
night3aven's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
- The Hunger Games: the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - review
But power feeds you and claims you, and young Coriolanus Snow knows this.
Even though an incredibly impactful and acclaimed trilogy like the Hunger Games seemed to be self-contained, with no need for any spin-offs, the prequel starring the young Coriolanus Snow manages to establish itself as a work of exceptional craftsmanship, perhaps even surpassing the original trilogy.
Little can be said about Suzanne Collins' style, which remains as sublime as ever and makes the whole work fluent and engrossing.
And yet the great highlight of the book is perhaps not simply the writing style, but rather the themes dealt with and the characters proposed.
In fact, the author does not merely perform a careful social commentary on the dangers of power and how difficult it can be to find a functional political system for the entire community (note the various references to political philosophy, especially from the Enlightenment era, with clear references to Rousseau and the state of nature), but also surgically analyses the ubiquitous class differences within any society, and what these entail.
A social contract is a possible means to avoid chaos, but it is at the same time an instrument of control, which allows the avoidance of a catastrophic state of destruction (whether this corresponds to the natural state of human beings is hard to say) but at the same time necessarily entails a guarantee as well as a limitation of freedom, and an inherent social hierarchy.
It is perhaps for this very reason that the work manages to stand out even above the original trilogy: it does not merely explore the reality and damages of war as such (although the content of the original saga is still exceptionally written and extremely interesting), but investigates the causes of war, and consequently of every human conflict in itself, in a more thorough and accurate analysis, not only kinematic (how?), but even highly dynamic (why?).
The transformation of Coriolanus is in this sense fundamental:
But the attainment of this goal, as Katniss later proves (even though Coriolanus is unaware of this until the last moment, fuelled by his hunger for power and the anger he harbours against himself for the way things ended with Lucy Gray) actually amounts to a miserable surrender: Snow becomes the most powerful man in Capitol City but this involves becoming a mere cog; his power is not real, no matter how tangible it may seem, it just makes him a founding element of a sick society, to which he merely belongs but which he cannot really control (the ability to modify and enact the Hunger Games remains more similar to a simple act of revenge and a demonstration of power, which follows from the mental washing to which Coriolanus, actually subjugated, has been subjected by Dr Gaul and the society in which he lives).
Moreover, the initial reasons why Coriolanus fought to win and gain power were merely an attempt to save himself and his family and survive, against a tormented childhood, against his family's poor economic conditions and against real hunger.
Also of note, the moment when Coriolanus returns from the woods after abandoning/killing Lucy Gray. Among his personal belongings, his mother's photographs and powder compact are thrown away, while his father's compass is kept.
This is a clear hint to the estrangement that Coriolanus imposes on himself, not only from Lucy Gray and love as such, but from his mother's/feminine mental side and thus entirely from his emotional side, leaving room only for a cold and dirty rationality, characteristic of his father, which makes him a perfect automaton for fomenting war, disinterested in humanity as such and merely producing new victims in a catastrophic process of (self-) destruction.
Coriolanus Snow is not the real villain of the story, but simply the perfect product of an inhuman and guilty society.
The characterisation of Lucy Gray (as well as that of the Coveys and the other secondary characters) is also excellent.
For while Lucy Gray runs away, probably fuelled by fear and not so much by revenge, Coriolanus definitively brands his love for her as a weakness and attempts to kill her, even though he is deep down aware that he loves her and acknowledges the life she could have offered him, but in the end he is led to suppress this desire, devoured by a hunger for power.
Excellent additions are also the various songs, which make clear the nature of the Coveys and the personality of Lucy Gray Baird, who unlike Katniss is not so much a hunter obliged to perform, but more a performer obliged to show herself as a hunter in the Games.
Finally, it is also essential to analyse, at least in a small way, the character of Sejanus Plinth, perhaps the only true hero of the story (
We're still part of the great social machinery, whether it is corrupted or functional.
To conclude, "The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes" presents itself as a work constructed with extreme care and refinement. It is not a simple young adult, but a book worthy of a certain consideration, not only for the author's writing style or for the careful characterisation of the characters, but also and above all for the reflection on themes that are still extremely topical and important even nowadays.
It is therefore fair to say, that Suzanne Collins' pen, incredible but true, has produced a new masterpiece, better even than any of her previous works.
You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn’t give you that right. Nothing does.
You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It's a lot to take in all at once, but it's essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about that you learned tonight.
Graphic: Death
Moderate: Alcohol, War, and Murder
Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Drug use, Animal death, and Grief
lj_sophia's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Gun violence, Murder, Child death, Toxic relationship, Animal cruelty, Alcohol, Violence, War, Death, Classism, Blood, Animal death, and Fire/Fire injury
Moderate: Drug use, Drug abuse, Suicide, Cannibalism, Infidelity, Addiction, and Grief