Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Release date: May 19th 2020
Pages: 517
Genre: Young Adult dystopian
Source: Purchased
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It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-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 outcharm, 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.  

I probably should have read the description for this book in order to save me this disappointment. When I like a series or an author, I will usually read their new book without reading the back cover or any kind of description because I like to go in not knowing anything about what's going to happen. So all I knew that this was a Hunger Games prequel, which I was excited about. If I had realized beforehand that this was a villain origin story for President Snow, I would have been much less interested in the novel, because the whole concept just doesn't seem necessary--I probably would've still read it, but I would've gone in with much lower expectations. This way, I was so disappointed once I realized this novel was about a young President Snow.

I'm not even sure how to review this book because most of my issues with it weren't with the execution or how this story was told, but just the premise of the novel. Out of all of the stories set in this universe Collins could've told, out of all the characters who could've gotten a background story.... why this one? 

I'm honestly confused about what the point of this story was. Are we supposed to be more understanding and sympathetic with President Snow? It didn't seem like it to me, because Coriolanus really isn't a sympathetic character at any point. From the beginning of the novel, he only thinks and cares about himself and is constantly using people to get what he wants. He claims to love Lucy Gray, but he really sees her more as his property than as an equal, and his jealousy and possessiveness of his partner in conjunction with his future or emerging violence as a leader make him somewhat of a poster child for toxic masculinity. In the beginning of the novel, he is questioning the morality of the Hunger Games and the way this world is set up, but clearly he abandons those qualms later in life, so I really didn't get what the point of any of that was. Was that supposed to make us hope for a different outcome than the one we know is coming? Was it supposed to make us realize he wasn't all bad? I'm sorry, but I don't want to empathize with President Snow.

The one thing that I did like about this book was getting to learn more about the history of the Hunger Games. The tenth Hunger Games look VERY different from the Hunger Games we saw in the original novel; they are lacking all of the spectacle and technology that made them what we know them to be. It was interesting to see how they developed and how the elements we saw in the original novels came to be. Seeing the roots of the rebel movement in the original series develop in District 12 was also interesting, and I liked seeing some of the rebel songs and acts of rebellion that will become important in the future take shape here.

However, this background info wasn't enough to carry the story, which is honestly just... boring. Especially the actual Hunger Games are excruciatingly boring, both because they are lacking the spectacle of the future Hunger Games and about half of the characters just die from starvation or exhaustion, and because we read about them from Coriolanus's view as a spectator, rather than actually being on the ground in the Games. The second half that takes place after the Games is more interesting than the first, but still not particularly interesting. You could say that this novel is an interesting exploration of this world and how it came to be, and a discussion about human nature and power in relation to Coriolanus's character development... but it just isn't a fun read in any way. Since not much really happens, this book probably could've been 200 pages shorter than it is.

***This paragraph contains spoilers, although I guess they're not that spoiler-y because we all know what will become of Coriolanus Snow!??***

The ending is super confusing. On the one hand, I'm glad it is clear that, at the end of the novel, Coriolanus is unequivocally evil, because the alternative of still trying to make us empathize with him would have been worse. On the other hand... the ending happens wayyy too quickly; I had no idea what was happening half the time, and what happened between him and Lucy Gray at the end just didn't make any sense. Since their relationship was the focus of most of the novel, I think we needed some more actual exploration of what happened between them and how that relates to Coriolanus's embracing of Capitol values.

All in all, this book was really hard to get through. I felt like I had to finish it, but I put it down so many times because I was bored, and I think it took me almost two weeks to get through it. I really just can't get over the fact that, instead of writing a background story from one of the many beloved characters from these novels, or re-writing part of this series from someone else's perspective, or writing literally anything else, Collins decided to give us over 500 pages about a young President Snow being slightly less evil and becoming progressively more evil. I just feel like this is a story no one really needed.