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A review by lit_terary
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
3.0
While this is no "Hunger Games", it's not remotely as bad as people are claiming, in my opinion. The story and the story-telling are not nearly as compelling and well-made as the original material, but "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" is not a bad book. Does it pale in comparison to the main trilogy? Absolutely. Did we really need it? Maybe not. However, the book holds its ground and gets the job done because Suzanne Collins is a damn good author regardless.
I think the positive and interesting aspects of the book were completely overshadowed by the length of the story. It was excessively long, especially in the early stages, for what it wanted to convey. I believe this story would've worked wonders and would've been much more poignant as a long novella. Most of that excessive space was also given to a lot of info-dumps and world-building sections that were not that interesting. I understand that Collin's main focus was to expand and give more background but, personally, I didn't think it added too much to what was already established.
On the other hand, I think more space should've been given to the characterization of Snow and the development of his relationship with Lucy Gray. For one, I found it weird that Collins didn't use the first-person point of view - as she did with Katniss - and I thought the character arc suffered a little bit because of it. The writing felt a little detached and made it hard for me to really dive into Coriolanus.
I obviously didn't love it as much as I loved the main trilogy, but, overall, it was still worth the read. I'm actually excited to see how they will handle the adaptation.
I think the positive and interesting aspects of the book were completely overshadowed by the length of the story. It was excessively long, especially in the early stages, for what it wanted to convey. I believe this story would've worked wonders and would've been much more poignant as a long novella. Most of that excessive space was also given to a lot of info-dumps and world-building sections that were not that interesting. I understand that Collin's main focus was to expand and give more background but, personally, I didn't think it added too much to what was already established.
On the other hand, I think more space should've been given to the characterization of Snow and the development of his relationship with Lucy Gray. For one, I found it weird that Collins didn't use the first-person point of view - as she did with Katniss - and I thought the character arc suffered a little bit because of it. The writing felt a little detached and made it hard for me to really dive into Coriolanus.
I obviously didn't love it as much as I loved the main trilogy, but, overall, it was still worth the read. I'm actually excited to see how they will handle the adaptation.