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Book Review: "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes"


A good series always ends with a dynamic prequel!

     Let's flash backwards to Suzanne Collins' world of Panem, where President Snow is merely eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow making his way through his senior year in the Capitol's prestigious high school. He's preparing to become one of the 24 first student mentors in the Tenth Annual Hunger Games. Readers see a historic version of Panem, decades before Katniss Everdeen was even a blimp on the country's radar of civilization. Irony is alive and well in this prequel, however, as Snow's tribute as an unlikely female located in none other than... District 12!
     Snow is fascinated by Lucy Gray, a witty-unconventional young woman who claims to not actually be from District 12 originally, but apart of a small traveling music group known as the Covey. The entire novel has short but meaningful instances featuring songs and music. Melodies shared among characters, all familiar as they are referenced throughout the Hunger Games trilogy (both on the page and screen). For instance, The Hanging Tree (beautiful melody and cut-throat words). It's all quite riveting how music was a tactical interweaving theme connecting this prequel to the rest of the trilogy, in addition to the obvious violence and danger that surrounds the Hunger Games.
    It was insightful and truly enlightening to see this side of Snow as a young man. He went through a number of ordeals in this prequel that I'm sure many readers, including myself, were unable to imagine when introduced to his decades older character in the trilogy. Relationships were formed and irrevocably extinguished in this novel, along with betrayals beyond realization until a reader is inhaling the last sentence of a chapter only to stumble into the next looking for answers. The attention to detail when it came to describing the setting and location of each area was done tremendously well. It's interesting attempting to picture a world in which you're already familiar to as a reader, however, that world is entirely different considering it's decades before anything that's been read.
    I'd highly recommend this prequel to those who have already been exposed (and fallen into obsession) with the Hunger Games. I am personally not entirely a huge fan of the length of the novel, considering it's longer than any of the others in the trilogy. ALTHOUGH, it's chock full of information, both relevant to the trilogy and Panem as a whole, that its worth pushing through the amount of pages. (Mind you, I read a number of lengthy novels, I'm just extra eager to get to the end of something that I've been looking forward to!) 
     Hope this review finds everyone in good times and if you were hesitant to consider reading another prequel of a well-read series--I hope you aren't anymore! :)

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