C+ | This is a hard book for me to review because I am very conflicted. I kept flipping between giving the star rating for Goodreads. Why? This book is a mixed bag of good, bad, and what in the heck is happening? I don’t hate the book. If anything I actually enjoyed this book, even though it is very slow and drawn out. It’s entertaining, has decent worldbuilding, and it certainly got reactions out of me. However, this book is a lot of telling and not enough showing with very awkward pacing. It’s just mediocre. Entertaining, but mediocre nevertheless.

Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0)

Author: Suzanne Collins

Synopsis: It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the 10th annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to out charm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined – every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

Publication Date: 19 May 2020

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REVIEW:

Okay, so it took my a few days to write this because I just had a lot of thoughts and they were all over the place.

Let’s get this out of the way real quick: I didn’t hate the book. In fact? I was entertained by it and rather enjoyed it at points. There were moments that shined bright in the book that I truly got a kick out of them. However, this book was also pretty boring a lot of the time.

The Good.

I think Collins did a fabulous job capturing that Snow’s asshole, privileged, future tyrannical essence. Snow’s POV stinks of privilege and borderline misogynistic language. He is possessive, selfish, and his reasonings for things and his way of thinking do not sit well with me. And he is so very human.

Look, I don’t feel bad for Snow (or anyone in the Capitol for that matter).

I can empathize with them, but I don’t pity them. Despite Snow’s circumstances, he is still a privileged kid. His thoughts weren’t about how will their family survive, but how will people think of him and the Snow name.

Yes, there are those moments where he talks about what the people of the Capitol had to do during the siege in order to survive. But he attempts to set himself and his family above “those people” without any thought because God forbid any member of the Snow family debase themselves.

Tigris dropped her gaze. “We all did thing’s we’re not proud of.”
“You didn’t,” he (Snow) said.
“Didn’t I?” Tigris spoke with an uncharacteristic bitterness. “We all did. Maybe you were too little to remember. Maybe you didn’t know how bad it really was.”
“How can you say that? That’s all I remember,” he shot back.”
“Then be kind, Coryo,” she snapped. “And try not to look down to people who had to choose between death and disgrace.”

Honestly, I adored this because it’s a reminder for all of us to remember not to judge others for what they’ve done to survive/ensure their loved ones’ survival.

But it’s scenes like this that, while they’re uncomfortable and show how much Snow does not give a sh!t about anyone else but himself and his needs, set the stage for who Snow becomes in the original trilogy.

Another thing that I enjoyed was the worldbuilding.

It’s interesting to see the contrast between the earlier Hunger Games vs. the later ones as well as the seeds that lead to the evolution of the Games. It’s also interesting to read about what happened to the Capitol and its citizens during the siege.

It’s fascinating, really, especially when you think about how citizens of the Capitol are in the future: greedy, gluttonous people. Access to almost limitless food and wealth fueled the fire.

But anyway let’s get to The Bad.

Oh god.

( I do want to mention the consistent mention of food/what Snow is eating. While I do think that it was excessive, I also think that it was necessary to show food’s importance to Snow. We can argue that it’s there just to add to the word count, but I’d like to believe the additions of these details are there to add something characterization wise. )

The biggest issue with this book is that it is primarily told by telling us what’s happening/happened, rather than showing us. For a book so thick, a lot of the time it felt like nothing was happening because we were being told after the fact that happened.

Details are great. Worldbuilding is great. Philosophical musings and dialogues are great.

But I wanted action.

I wanted spice because this book was pretty bland with a main character who honestly was no better than unseasoned chicken. It certainly didn’t help that the pacing was just so awkward and too much of the book, we were told what happened rather than shown.

It’s been ages since I’ve read the original trilogy, so I don’t remember if this was an issue in those books. But here? Absolutely bothered me because you already have that issue of a protagonist who is quite frankly unbearable at times and I have little sympathy for this cast of characters.

And okay. Look, if you have read my review of Forest of a Thousand Lanterns, you’ll know that I love villains. I find villains fascinating and I always look for books that have well-written villains that are up to par with Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader.

If Collins wanted me to be sympathetic to Snow, it didn’t work. If she wanted me to see him as a hero, it didn’t work. She wants to create some sort of villain origin story for Snow? This ain’t it. Again, for a book so thick at 500+ pages, nothing really developed in Snow. So he learned a few things, but where is his spiral into tyranny? We see hints, but I wanted more. It’s clear to me that this is the first book and we should expect more in the next few years either in Snow’s POV or at least related to Snow’s ascent and why he is the way he is during the original trilogy.

I’m not one to shy away from villain origin stories, but if this is going to be done, I expect it to be amazing.

This, sadly, isn’t amazing which says a lot.

Where is Snow’s development? In fact, how about the other characters? Where is their development? Am I supposed to applaud these characters for seeing their tributes as humans rather than animals?

The only thing that changed was the number of characters I needed to keep track of because they died somehow.

On the Nostalgia Factor.

Look, nostalgia is a beast to combat. Even for someone like me who just likes THG well enough, I have a lot of nostalgia for this series. When this book was announced, I admit that I was one of those people hoping it was about Mags or about what lead to the Hunger Games in the first place and was disappointed when I found out what this book is about. Even though I came into this book with no conscious expectations and read it with an open mind, there’s this that subconscious side of me that had imagined something different in my mind.

It can be difficult for any form of media that has some nostalgia to combat the fans’ expectations and be its own thing. Look at how anyone reacts to any sort of video game remake/remaster and you’ll find numerous people mentioning something about the original version. Look at how Final Fantasy fans reacted to FF15! It’s a completely new title in the franchise, yet people dunked on it because it wasn’t “as good” as FF7 or it “didn’t feel like an FF game”.

At least for me, it’s the same situation here. Even though I haven’t read THG in so long and I just like the series, I have this image in my mind of how I remember the books being and what those books’ themes are and what they explored. It’s not perfect, but I had those expectations deep in the back of my mind.

What did this book explore, really?

Is Collins trying to set us up for more books about Snow’s descent into tyranny and rise to power? Is she trying to show us that even though people have suffered, there’s no excuse for the oppression and deaths they cause to those they rule over? Or is this one of those books that’s supposed to make us feel bad for the oppressors?

Overall.

Again, I didn’t hate this book. I enjoyed it to an extent and found it entertaining at times. However, the biggest issue for me that I just could not get over (& why this book has the rating it has) is the writing. Telling us what happened rather than showing us isn’t exactly what I call a fun time. What makes matters worse is the pacing. It felt like nothing happened and no one developed. People just died.

Do I think people should read this book?

Yes. You might enjoy it or you might hate it. Either way, borrow the book from a friend and then go from there.