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

challenging dark medium-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I would have loved a more comprehensive exploration of the "Dark Days", the ascent of the Capitol and the initial origination of Hunger Games, but that's not the promise of the premise, so, okay. The beginnings of the mentorship and sponsorship programs is also an interesting piece of worldbuilding. I think young adult literature is a great way to grapple with big philosophical ideas about human nature, civilisation and our capacity for evil, and Suzanne Collins has demonstrated her capacity to facilitate this again in this sequel.

The subversion of the highly-produced, nail-biting Hunger Games of the original trilogy is a interesting change. Lucy Gray is a delightful heroine, though I will say staying in Coriolanus' point of view was an interesting choice... He was so relentlessly self-centred and untrustworthy, I was so distracting by how unlikeable he was;
(I know he had sympathetic circumstances in the Capitol and the trauma of the war in his childhood, but his consistent choice to choose seeking power over people, and deflect human connection is just... so horrible and sad.)


The end escalates so quickly, and
Coriolanus' descent into paranoia was so intense and so well done. I love the ambiguity of what Lucy Gray was doing in that climatic scene, but the reveal that the snake was non-venomous was just like... my dude, this is on you. As usual, I chose to believe my favourite character survive and live long and happy lives (just like Finnick, thanks very much Suzanne Collins.)

 
I definitely chose the audiobook because it was performed by Santino Fontana, who I adored in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Roger and Hammerstein's Cinderella, whose lovely Disney Prince voice everyone would recognise from Hans. So I was pretty disappointed with the lack of music in this audio production. Obviously they hadn't set the songs to music yet, but let's be real, the film (which I haven't seen yet but I assume she's singing the whole time) was always going to be made so it would have been great to have mocked up the melodies to create a really high quality audiobook. As it is, I wouldn't recommend the audio over the physical book. 

I would recommend this, but not as a must-read the way the originals are. All I know is I couldn't move on with my life. 
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