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A review by noirverse
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
5.0
New Rating: 5 stars
Most of my original criticisms still stand, but at the same time I had such a good time re-reading this that they barely felt relevant. It's a great story at the end of the day and absolutely rewards revisiting it.
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Original Rating: 4 stars
First off, I can definitely see why this is a bit of a controversial book for the series. I personally really enjoyed it (aside from a couple of letdowns) and I think it depends on how willing you are to stick with a narrator that's an unpleasant person and has a very skewed outlook on life. I usually like sticking it out with morally questionable narrators so it worked for me. Coriolanus' story is an interesting one. It's not a redemption by any means, but that doesn't mean there are no moments of sympathy for him. We get to see how his life experiences shaped his worldview and how his worldview shapes the rest of his life in turn.
I read this fast, which is saying something since previously I was stuck in a months long reading slump. Even at the slowest points of the story it was still interesting due to the worldbuilding we were given at every turn. Sejanus (and to a lesser extent Lucy Gray) was an excellent counter to Coriolanus' myopic world views and I think they made the book.
What made me knock off a star, however, is that the last third of the book felt pretty rushed and I wish we had more pages to flesh things out. Perhaps it could've even been a whole book on its own and turned the story into a duology.
We get almost zero time to care about any of the District 12 characters beyond the fact we're rooting for them to succeed in rebellion and imagine how much more impactful Sejanus' tragic end could've been if we actually knew more about the people involved he was trying to help. There were one too many songs, too. The lyrics were nice, but did we really need a brand-new song nearly every chapter, sometimes multiple ones going on in one chapter?
I liked most of the foreshadowing to the main trilogy throughout the story but towards the end it became over the top and started to feel like pandering for the sake of pandering. I also definitely had strongly mixed feelings about the big climax which was possibly the most rushed moment of all. It was obviously coming, I could see it from miles away, but the actual scene didn't quite stick the landing. The transition from Coriolanus running away with Lucy Gray and then deciding he needs to kill her feels like it happens in five seconds and there's also the heavy ambiguity surrounding the whole thing which I both liked and didn't like.
The ending is both a pro and a con because on one hand I liked how much ambiguity remained for how much was it Coriolanus' paranoia ruining everything and how much was it Lucy Gray outwitting him. Not to mention the open question of if Lucy Gray had any genuine feelings for him or if it was a manipulation from start to finish for the sake of survival. I have the impression the answer is somewhere in the middle on both points. On the other hand the con is...everything I just listed.
The ending is so open-ended that, while it makes me ponder, I also wish we had the slightest bit of concrete closure on what Lucy Gray was thinking because she's a mystery box at the end. What was their relationship to her? Did she live or did she die that day? Perhaps that's fitting though, since she will haunt Coriolanus for the rest of his life, dead or alive, and she now gets to haunt the readers.
Most of my original criticisms still stand, but at the same time I had such a good time re-reading this that they barely felt relevant. It's a great story at the end of the day and absolutely rewards revisiting it.
----
Original Rating: 4 stars
First off, I can definitely see why this is a bit of a controversial book for the series. I personally really enjoyed it (aside from a couple of letdowns) and I think it depends on how willing you are to stick with a narrator that's an unpleasant person and has a very skewed outlook on life. I usually like sticking it out with morally questionable narrators so it worked for me. Coriolanus' story is an interesting one. It's not a redemption by any means, but that doesn't mean there are no moments of sympathy for him. We get to see how his life experiences shaped his worldview and how his worldview shapes the rest of his life in turn.
I read this fast, which is saying something since previously I was stuck in a months long reading slump. Even at the slowest points of the story it was still interesting due to the worldbuilding we were given at every turn. Sejanus (and to a lesser extent Lucy Gray) was an excellent counter to Coriolanus' myopic world views and I think they made the book.
What made me knock off a star, however, is that the last third of the book felt pretty rushed and I wish we had more pages to flesh things out. Perhaps it could've even been a whole book on its own and turned the story into a duology.
We get almost zero time to care about any of the District 12 characters beyond the fact we're rooting for them to succeed in rebellion and imagine how much more impactful Sejanus' tragic end could've been if we actually knew more about the people involved he was trying to help. There were one too many songs, too. The lyrics were nice, but did we really need a brand-new song nearly every chapter, sometimes multiple ones going on in one chapter?
I liked most of the foreshadowing to the main trilogy throughout the story but towards the end it became over the top and started to feel like pandering for the sake of pandering. I also definitely had strongly mixed feelings about the big climax which was possibly the most rushed moment of all. It was obviously coming, I could see it from miles away, but the actual scene didn't quite stick the landing. The transition from Coriolanus running away with Lucy Gray and then deciding he needs to kill her feels like it happens in five seconds and there's also the heavy ambiguity surrounding the whole thing which I both liked and didn't like.
The ending is both a pro and a con because on one hand I liked how much ambiguity remained for how much was it Coriolanus' paranoia ruining everything and how much was it Lucy Gray outwitting him. Not to mention the open question of if Lucy Gray had any genuine feelings for him or if it was a manipulation from start to finish for the sake of survival. I have the impression the answer is somewhere in the middle on both points. On the other hand the con is...everything I just listed.
The ending is so open-ended that, while it makes me ponder, I also wish we had the slightest bit of concrete closure on what Lucy Gray was thinking because she's a mystery box at the end. What was their relationship to her? Did she live or did she die that day? Perhaps that's fitting though, since she will haunt Coriolanus for the rest of his life, dead or alive, and she now gets to haunt the readers.