A review by obsidian_blue
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

1.0

 

Wow. This was pointless. I understand why authors sometimes come back and do prequels to best-selling novels. You want to see how did person A get to where they are. But I really do not understand why anyone cared at all about Snow. Collins does not provide any insight into the character. And then the ending leaves some things unresolved that you can just 'guess' at. Ten bucks there's another prequel coming out about [redacted] in a few years. And honestly, the worst thing about this book outside of it was pointless was that it was boring! I legit started four other books while trying to finish this behemoth because I didn't want to DNF it because I am reading this book for a game I am playing and I wanted the page count. If not for that, I would have DNFed this thing at the 25 percent mark and went about my day. Also.....I loathed the singing. Or the lyrics I guess of the song. I would have murdered Lucy Gray after the tenth damn song she burst into. I feel really bad for anyone that got the audio version of this book. I would have been over it a few minutes in.

"The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" follows 18 year old Coriolanus Snow. Panem is readying for the 10th Hunger Games. Apparently the Games started to grow out of much watch viewing (yeah watching a bunch of teenagers murder each other, is not great actually) and this year, Capitol Academy students are chosen to be mentors to each tribute. Have fun trying to track 24 mentors and 24 tributes!

Snow and his family are barely hanging on and he needs to make sure the tribute he gets is someone that can at least help his family's name. He doesn't think he will win the final prize (pay for him to get a ride to university). Snow is matched with a girl from District 12 named Lucy Gray. He's disappointed until Lucy shows some spirit when she's brought up. She's a young woman with a great voice who Snow can't help feeling for.

The long-winded book follows Snow through the Games and after.

As I said earlier, Snow is not well developed. Lucy is not either. A friend suggested that the book should have followed Lucy and I agree. I do bet Collins didn't want to do that, since people would have said oh she's setting up another Katniss, but heck, anything would have been better than this. Snow is not developed. One minute Collins writes him as having some feelings/emotions and then quickly it is a not really. I don't think it works having a villain with a tragic backstory, sometimes terrible people are just terrible. But then you go, what was the point of this book? You just watch Snow sit around manipulating and betraying people all over the place. This could have been much shorter and told the same story.