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erynlasbelin 's review for:
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
by Suzanne Collins
challenging
dark
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
When it was first announced that this book was going to be about Snow, I immediately lost all interest in it. And clearly I'm quite late to the party in reading it. But I think it was very well-executed.
The reader goes into this knowing Snow is an awful person, and the book doesn't shy away from making him awful. It just expands on the nuance he already showed in the original trilogy, and allows him a level of naïveté that makes it bearable to be in his head for this long. Most of his worst thoughts stay in his head, so you can understand why the more likable, moral characters around him can trust him and project their own goodness onto him. His darker impulses get steadily worse, and in the end, he devolves completely.
The other characters are very interesting in their own rights, particularly Sejanus and Lucy Gray. Sejanus would be the protagonist of this book if it had been written in another time. Lucy Gray is in some ways the anti-Katniss, charming, outgoing, and an easy performer.
The world-building here is also elegantly done. I really enjoyed diving into the much earlier days of the Capitol in the postwar period, when its inhabitants were still...normal. It's fascinating to see what they endured and how they found a way forward, and to compare them to their descendants decades later. It's also great to see the early, low-tech, low-investment versions of the Hunger Games themselves, the challenges they posed, the lack of interest in them, the level of controversy and distaste for them even in the Capitol, and the brainstorming that would lead to the Games as we know them by Katniss's time. This brought a level of realism and groundedness to the world of Panem that may have been somewhat lacking in the original trilogy, just because we were missing these links in the chain, explanations for how society could get to that point.
Now if everyone could please stop shipping Snow and Lucy Gray, we'll be set.
The reader goes into this knowing Snow is an awful person, and the book doesn't shy away from making him awful. It just expands on the nuance he already showed in the original trilogy, and allows him a level of naïveté that makes it bearable to be in his head for this long. Most of his worst thoughts stay in his head, so you can understand why the more likable, moral characters around him can trust him and project their own goodness onto him. His darker impulses get steadily worse, and in the end, he devolves completely.
The other characters are very interesting in their own rights, particularly Sejanus and Lucy Gray. Sejanus would be the protagonist of this book if it had been written in another time. Lucy Gray is in some ways the anti-Katniss, charming, outgoing, and an easy performer.
The world-building here is also elegantly done. I really enjoyed diving into the much earlier days of the Capitol in the postwar period, when its inhabitants were still...normal. It's fascinating to see what they endured and how they found a way forward, and to compare them to their descendants decades later. It's also great to see the early, low-tech, low-investment versions of the Hunger Games themselves, the challenges they posed, the lack of interest in them, the level of controversy and distaste for them even in the Capitol, and the brainstorming that would lead to the Games as we know them by Katniss's time. This brought a level of realism and groundedness to the world of Panem that may have been somewhat lacking in the original trilogy, just because we were missing these links in the chain, explanations for how society could get to that point.
Now if everyone could please stop shipping Snow and Lucy Gray, we'll be set.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Cannibalism, Murder, Toxic friendship, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism
Moderate: Addiction, Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Alcohol
Minor: Vomit