Book Look: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

All of the YA/middle grade staples are returning in earnest in this new decade. There's an "Artemis Fowl" movie coming (finally), Percy Jackson has a reboot, and now let's read a Hunger Games prequel.

Coriolanus Snow is a kid whose family has fallen on hard times, after being one of the prime families in the Capitol of Panem. You can tell because he and his cousin, who would become the half-cat lady hiding in the costume shops in Mockingjay, keep repeating "Snow lands on top". He pretends he still has his wealth and prestige when in reality, they're sinking.





And then he falls in love with the Tribute he is set to sponsor, a girl named Lucy Gray, who seems to only exist to tie us back to District 12 and hammer in the origin of so many things in the main series. It's terribly obvious that she is supposed to be a distant ancestor of Katniss.

The first 1/4th of the book is genuinely interesting, but doesn't enlighten us on the Great War as much as one would like. Even the Hunger Games - this one the 10th - are anticlimatic. It is interesting to see where many of the ideas from the Games in the main series (the 74th) come from.

The rest of the book is truly a lot of mucking around. It's not interesting, it's almost pointless, knowing how the character ends up. Don't say "It's because it's a prequel." - "The Saga of Larten Crepsley" is a prequel as well, and it's very interesting, as it gives more insight into the ways of the vampires.

The book ends before the actually interesting things happen. If this has plans to be a full fledged trilogy, it would still be weak, but more understandable. As far as I'm aware, this is a standalone story that probably could have been a short story instead.