Book Review: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes… is it worth the read?

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

3/5 Stars

Check out a podcast version of this book review!

A Quick Summary 

If you listened to my podcast ( thank you from the bottom of my heart), still read my review. I’m going to get into the nitty gritties of this book. 

Let me summarize the Hunger Games for you.

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, is set in a dystopian society. The country of Panam is split into 12 districts and is controlled by The Capital. 

The Capital is where the rich and famous live, and the districts are where all of the resources used in the country come from. 

Each district is poorer than the last, ending with District 12, where the main characters are from. 

The Hunger Games are a battle to the death hosted by the Capital to remind the districts who is in charge and what they have to lose. 

The villain of the trilogy is the President of Panam, Coriolanus Snow. And surprise, the prequel is in his POV. 

That’s all I’m going to tell you guys. 

The book I’m reviewing, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins is the prequel to the trilogy. 

This book follows him as a mentor in the tenth Hunger Games. In the first Hunger Games book, Katniss competes in the 74th Hunger Games.

Intro

I put off reading this book for a long time because I never actually read the original series.

When the movies came out on Netflix earlier this year, my friends and I binged them all and became obsessed with the series. When you get into the Hunger Games, you realize there is so much history you don’t know and so many questions you need answered.

I think most readers hoped this prequel would fill in the gaps that are left from the trilogy, and I feel like this book answered some, but not all my burning questions. 

I started the first 12 chapters as an audiobook, which I suggest doing. The book is super narrative-heavy, which isn’t my favorite thing, so the audiobook helped me get into it.

I was a little bored with this book, but overall, I liked it. Let me tell you what I thought. 

Characters

Our main character is 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow. 

Snow comes from a wealthy family, but during the war between the Districts and The Capital his father died, making Snow an orphan, and the family fell from their upper-class standing. Snow lives with his cousin Tigris and their grandmother. 

However, Snow does everything he can to hide his poverty from everyone he knows. As an expert manipulator, he has everyone around him believing that nothing changed once the war ended and his dad died. 

For people who never read or watched the original Hunger Games, Snow is not a good character. From the moment you meet him, you hate him. He craves power and will do anything to maintain the status and wealth of The Capital. 

So going into this book, I already knew Snow sucked, but it was interesting reading his character because Collins definitely tried to humanize him and gain sympathy from her readers. 

The book is written in third-person limited in Snow’s point of view, which gives us his perspective on being a kid in the Capital. 

Throughout the book, I kept reminding myself who Snow becomes later. 

Collins did a great job making Snow seem less like a power-hungry psychopath and instead, like an ambitious kid who only wants to be successful in life. 

Snow’s relationship with his cousin Tigris is used to distract you from his negative qualities. From the beginning, we see how much the cousins care for each other. It seems impossible for a character like Snow to have such a loving relationship with someone, but we see it clearly between the two. 

And while we see that Snow can care for people, his selfishness and thirst for power overpower any positives about him. 

Snow’s character is also incredibly manipulative. This makes me see him as an unreliable narrative. As I was reading, there were instances where Snow would think or say something, and then future actions would prove that he was lying. 

I felt like I couldn’t trust anything he said. 

One example is his friendship with another character and mentor, Sejanus. 

“Coriolanus’s first impulse had been to join his classmates’ campaign to make the new kid’s life a living hell. On further reflection, he’d ignored him. If the other Capitol children took this to mean that baiting the district brat was beneath him, Sejanus took it as decency. Neither take was quite accurate, but both reinforced the image of Coriolanus as a class act.”

Sejanus comes from an incredibly rich family, which Snow talks about a lot. When we first meet Sejanus, Snow really doesn’t like him. He is not shy about expressing his distaste for him and how he doesn’t deserve his wealth and status in The Capital. 

The quote I include is Snow saying he doesn't bully Seajnus because it makes him look like a nice guy.

However, I felt like it was almost whiplash when Snow suddenly started referring to Sejanus as one of his closest friends, and I think Sejanus’s money is why. 

Snow constantly benefits from Sejnaus’s money, whether it’s his mother sending Snow meals or their driver taking Snow home, Snow benefits. 

Snow never outwardly says he is using Sejanus but with how the book ends, we see that Snow had ulterior motives for the friendship that he never told the reader about, which is why I find him unreliable and manipulative. 

His friendship with Sejanus is just one example that shows how calculated Snow is. He has no friendships or relationships he can’t benefit from or gain something from. Even the most important people in his life, like Tigris, help him in some way. 

These instances help you remember that Snow isn’t the sad character you should be pitying, even though you want to. 

The second character I’ll talk about is Lucy Gray Baird. 

Lucy Gray is the female tribute from District 12 whom Snow is assigned to mentor. 

We first meet Lucy when she’s picked for the Hunger Games, where she steals the microphone and sings to the crowd.

This instantly sets her up as a confident and outgoing character. 

As Snow mentors her, they fall for each other quite quickly. This is where I started to get frustrated. I felt like Lucy’s character wouldn’t fall for Snow’s BS, which is why I sort of think Lucy was using Snow. 

I think her feelings for him were genuine, but I wonder if she exaggerated them before and during the games because she knew it would help her win.

We saw very early on that Snow’s status and relationship with Lucy helped her gain supporters and ultimately win the Hunger Games. 

I also think Snow’s feelings for her were real, but I do think some of his kindness and generosity were motivated by his need for her to win the Hunger Games. If winning the Hunger Games hadn’t promised him money and an education, I don’t think he would’ve been as interested in Lucy. 

Plot, Structure, and Style ,oh my!

As we talked about in the podcast, this book is split into three parts, which break down to before the Hunger Games, during, and after the Games. 

I felt like the first and last sections were a little long and boring.

This book was narrative-heavy, which isn’t my favorite as I mentioned in my book review for Last Night At The Telegraph Club.

For the first half of the book, we mostly get Snow’s thoughts. 

This gives us his perspective on the war, his poverty, and his thoughts on all the people he interacts with. 

I enjoyed that information, but I also grew bored of it. 

One of my favorite things about this book was how much insight we got about how the Hunger Games became what it was in the trilogy. 

In the original series, Katniss and Peeta are competing in the 74th Hunger Games. The Games are extravagant and brutally intense. The technology in the Games is elaborate and there are many elements to the Games, like a series of Game makers who control every aspect of the Games.

During the 10th Games, we see what the Games were like before innovation. There is no fanfare or dramatics and very little technology. There is no one controlling what happens in the arena as we see during Katniss’s games. 

I’d say the 10th Hunger Games was pivotal because it introduced a lot of new aspects.

The first nine games mostly consisted of the tributes being thrown into the arena with no food or water. The games never lasted more than a day or two.

However, the 10th game introduced sponsors, which we see during Katniss and Peeta’s game.

Sponsorships allowed Capital people to send food to their favorite tribute, which ultimately led to the Games lasting longer since tributes weren’t starving to death. 

To gain sponsorship, a tribute needs viewers to like them, so it also creates a sense of entertainment. Lucy would sing and interact with Capital people to gain sympathy and support so people would send her food. 

Another thing we saw be introduced was genetically engineered animals. 

In the original trilogy, the games are filled with deadly lab-created animals and elements that threaten the tributes. 

The 10th Hunger Games is the first time lab-created animals were set loose in the stadium. 

Dr. Gaul, the head Game Maker, sends deadly snakes into the arena to attack and kill as many tributes as they can. 

I loved these small inclusions because I was able to see connections between the prequel and trilogy. 

The ending

This might sound dramatic, but I don’t think I’ve read a more shocking yet unsatisfying ending.

The last two pages had me jaw dropped, yet I was so bored by the time the epilogue came around that I was begging the story to end. 

This final section will be filled with lots of spoilers, so skip this section if you want to read the book. 

Even though the book had an epilogue, I felt like the last 100 pages could be considered the end of the book. 

Snow is sent to be a Peacekeeper after he is caught cheating in the Games, so he thinks he has no chance of reclaiming his life in the Capital. Because of this, he agrees to run away with Lucy Gray when she suggests it. 

Even though I questioned Snow’s feelings for Lucy Gray, I do think he really loved her. He was ready to abandon any chance at life to run away with her.

But as his selfish ways have proved, he always thinks of himself and considers every option. 

Right before he runs, he learns that he can go back to The Capital and go to university. This instantly makes him hesitant to leave with Lucy.

Now, this is where I began to question how much Lucy actually loved Snow.

Before Snow attempts to run away with Lucy, his friend Sejanus is hanged for treason. As the reader, we know that Snow ratted Sejanus out to the capital for working with the rebellion, but no one else does.

As they were leaving to run off, Snow reveals that he might have played a role in Sejanus’s death.

Lucy tells him she needs to gather some food and will be right back, and that’s the last we see her.

Lucy disappearing so randomly was quite anti-climactic. Collins built this character up for 400 books and then she disappears. It felt kind of half-assed. 

The epilogue is where things go crazy. 

The ending is so shocking because we find out that Snow is living with Sejanus’s family and that they’ve basically adopted him.

No one knows Snow was the reason for Sejanus’s death. Instead, everyone, especially Sejanus’s family, thought that Snow was his best friend until the end. 

This is where you see how Sejanus’s friendship is incredibly valuable to Snow. By being his friend and sucking up to his family, Snow ensured that he’d have a family and money to take care of him.

This is the biggest example in the book where we see that Snow always has ulterior motives. 

I thought this was absolutely crazy.

We truly saw how selfish, ambitious, and manipulative Snow was in this final situation. The sympathy he gained was washed away.

Snow killed his best friend and then replaced him in his family with no remorse. 

Final Thoughts

Like Gretchen and I said in our podcast, we both gave this book a 3/5 stars. 

I was bored for a good chunk of this book and didn’t have an urge to keep reading. 

I’m an easily distracted reader, but I’m also easily sucked in. I can finish a book in a day if it’s enthralling enough, and I didn’t feel that with this book. 

I was left with a lot of questions that I felt could’ve been answered. I understand that Collins wanted us to be left wondering, but I felt like too much was left unclear.

There are at least 60 years between the prequel and trilogy, so a lot of room for things to have happened that we don’t know. 

Something I liked is how the reader knows the whole time what happens with Snow.

We know he becomes the President and doesn’t marry Lucy, but Collins succeeded in making us question everything.

Overall, I say read the book. I’ll let you guys know next week how the movie is!

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