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

adventurous dark reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

"A lot of fluff. Drivel, really. Until that bit in the end. The part about control."

Dr. Gaul herself pretty much sums this one up. The book was an absolute drag for over 200 pages, only picking up, if I remember right, around p. 240ish. I really wanted to love it, but slogging through those pages was an absolute challenge and makes it a kind of an underwhelming footnote in an otherwise amazing series. I actually only picked it up yesterday at around p. 100 with the sole intention of just getting through it for the sake of having read and being done with it (I'm a chronic completionist).

The basic political and moral philosophy found in the text were the most interesting parts, though I also enjoyed the multiple nods to the fact that Snow never once thought of Lucy Gray as existing beyond and outside of himself; he thought of her as his possession and always had since their first meeting. Collins no doubt encourages us to think on our own about the consequences of power and freedom, how Panem reflects countless of our own governments, if there's truly a way to rebel against their clutches with minimal casualties, and how women are disposable under the current hegemony. It's impossible to read it, especially today, without drawing parallels of your own.

Snow starts out apparently sympathetic to a certain extent, but within the first couple of chapters it's clear his only

frame of reference for what constitutes suffering is a fall from power and wealth: the districts are a world away from his world and deserve whatever comes to them; no one is exempt from Capitol propaganda. He doesn't get developed much beyond this... the evil has always been there as is made clear by his narration later on, though I think Lucy Gray's observation is astute: it's the world that formed his frame of reference, his principles, his values, and what ultimately made him who he is by the end. Snow crossed that line into evil and failed the mission to stay on the right side, dragged right down by a desire to maintain the Snow family name, in honour of his father.

A powerful woman entirely erased from the history of Panem, only for her ghost to return and dethrone Snow decades later... Gray obscures the pure driven snow.

I can't imagine myself reading this again unlike with the previous books, but I am still looking forward to Sunrise on the Reaping and can only hope that it will be much much better than this one.
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