Medium: Audiobook
Publisher: Scholastic Press
Length: 16 hours 16 min
Rating: 2.5/5
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, 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 have officially reentered my dystopian phase! Before I picked up the prequel -- as the completionist that I am -- I first went back to read The Hunger Games trilogy again. The impact this series had on me as an impressionable, young pre-teen was quite significant. Up until 2011 I was almost exclusively a realistic fiction/romance reader. I had a few forays into the fantasy genre with major series like Harry Potter or Percy Jackson, but it was limited. The Hunger Games was my formal introduction to all things speculative fiction and it was just in time for the Dystopian YA boom of the early 2010s. A small part of me thinks that returning to the trilogy first was a mistake, but only a small part. (I enjoy those books too much to ever truly regret rereading them.)
Off the tail end of such a solidly written, action packed, emotionally driven, and thematically strong trio of books, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes falls so incredibly short. After so much media hype on TikTok and YouTube about the prequel, I fully expected to be blown away be the twists and turns that lead to the rise of evil dictator-in-poor-disguise President Snow with a tragic true love story thrown in for spice. Instead what I got was a baby manipulator rich kid learning his trade while whining that having everything handed to him is "so hard" because it didn't come in the quantity he expected it to. (And don't even get me started on failed-manic-pixie-dream-girl Lucy "One Note" Gray Baird.) And yes, while I fully understand that we are never meant to like Snow, I think that the fact that we are never given the chance to maybe, possibly, want to root for him, diminishes the overall impact of his choices.
The Dr. Gaul/Dean Highbottom of it all
The thing that makes my point for me most clearly is Dr. Gaul and the juxtaposition of her character and Snow. She is meant to represent the end of the spectrum that believes all of humanity will be innately evil without an incentive or structure pushing them to be civil or good. Dr. Gaul finds entertainment in suffering and sees nothing but growth experiences in traumatic events. To me, the basis of her character is to, ironically, be Snow's mentor to the dark-side. She represents the temptation of power and the possibility of manipulative group think. The main issue is that, besides being a little put off by her blatant disregard for humanity (or as Snow sees it, her blatant disregard of people in superior positions like him) the two of them bond over a similar ethical standing right away. The way this could have played out with more impact is if after Snow meets Lucy Gray, he pushes back on his original line of thinking. Lacking this pushback, even just within his own head, means the reader is robbed of any sympathy for his struggle of which side of the line to fall on.
Another way the whole thing could have been stronger is if Suzanne Collins actually followed through with placing Dean Highbottom on the opposite end of the spectrum from Dr. Gaul. It didn't have to be obvious, or even explicitly stated, but having Highbottom subtly trying to push Snow toward the ethical and moral high ground (pun kind of intended) would really have presented Snow with the active choice to go a different way. There are moments where I felt like Collins was trying to do this, including when the dean gave Snow his first demerit, but it never had any umph. Even the backstory of Highbottom and Snow's father would have played perfectly into this presentation of the dean' s character. It really feels like a missed opportunity.
The Main Crimes
I would like to levy two crimes against this book in readers court: 1) the crime of word count overreaching the plot and 2) the crime of a passive main character. Or in other words, this thing is too damn long and too damn boring.
Let's start with the first crime.
Part of the magic of the original trilogy is that they hit the sweet spot of length X action X plot points. All three books exist in the space where every chapter has enough action and plot to drive you forward into the next chapter without feeling rushed and lost on the greater picture. Even when we are at the slow points (Peeta and Katniss' victory tour or adapting to and training in District 13) enough background plot seeds are being planted that it feels like the breathers between action that we need without being boring. This book does not have that.
Like I mentioned with Dean Highbottom, there are moments where I could feel Collins trying to put this same technique into place, but it doesn't quite work. I can't really put my finger on why... but best guess is there was a lack of B-plot. Whenever there was low action moments in the original trilogy, little strings of political intrigue, love stories, or familial relationships were criss-crossing all over the place. That's what it is! There was always multiple storylines happening at once, one on top of the other, in the trilogy. In this book the storylines happen one right after the other. If the different A, B, and C plots were more layered, we could have cut the 30% of this book that was Snow walking to and from the Citadel and to and from the Seam and to and from the Zoo (really we got so, so much description of this man walking). The fact that it was such a bang shot ending to such a slow, slow story was honestly rude. The most shocking things happened in the 15 minutes of the EPILOGUE! Like, come on!
The second, and honestly more egregious, crime.
I got to about hour 13.75 of the audiobook, had a bit of a meltdown, and almost DNFed. I had to talk to a friend and co-worker of mine who had already finished the book and have her convince me that I was indeed just curious enough to tough out the 2.5 (!) hours (which I whittled down to 1.75 by listening to it at 1.5 speed). I was over it. Nothing of note had happened in the last three chapters except for Sejanus' death which was mostly glossed over. (Justice for Sejanus!) NOTHING WAS HAPPENING! Snow was just complaining and walking around and saying the same 3 three things in his internal narration over and over just in different ways. He wasn't doing ANYTHING. I was only still reading because I needed to know how Collins planned to end it.
I saw someone else say it in another review that this was "either the most brilliant villain origin story or the most boring". I happen to agree. On one hand, Snow being such a passive participant in his own villain arc is so poignant. It presents this statement about the casualness with which people can -- and will -- perpetrate atrocities in our society. That he, almost without thought, turns toward becoming the hand tying the noose (both metaphorically and literally when it comes to Sejanus...ouch) points to the idea that while some of us will say "yeah that is horrible, no question" it may not even register with others as problematic. In this way, the writing of the story was brilliant.
On the other hand, Snow comes across as so sharp and eloquently evil in the original trilogy that it makes this version of him starting his rise to power hard to believe. Everything that happens only happens because he stumbled into it through the efforts or naiveté of others while he is solely looking out for his own interests. Even with Tigris at the very beginning of the book; she is helping him -- and he appreciates that -- but despite a single moment of musing about how she is able to help, he doesn't really care. Over all he is just a narcissistic, manipulative little twerp who tripped and fell into power because other, smarter people saw him as a good mouth piece and he was willing enough to get his hands dirty in order to protect his perceived public image. This entire story, bar a few moments I can count with less than one hand, happens to Snow instead of because of Snow.
The "Love" Story
Now is the time to address the lack of media literacy that plagues our society. The fact that anyone read this book and came out of it saying "Snow and Lucy Gray were in love" didn't read the story. These two did not love one another. The love story here is what would have happened if Katniss and Peeta were soulless and truly only using their love story as a play to get sympathy in the arena. Snow and Lucy Gray were using each other to survive. The minute that their personal survival is put in peril by the other person, both of them are more than willing to abandon, throw under the bus, or kill the other. This is made the most clear by the end of their story. The second that Snow found those guns, they both knew it was every man for themselves. Lucy Gray didn't hesitate to plant a snake in the bushes (which was defiantly a explicit metaphor) and bolt. Snow didn't hesitate to pick up an automatic gun and just keep firing.
Side note: That scene of Snow emptying an entire magazine of bullets mindlessly into the trees while spinning in a circle is the single most ridiculous thing that I have ever read.
Another reason it's clear these two were never really in love is that Lucy Gray, from the moment she stepped on page, is cast as the manic-pixie-dream-girl in Snow's story. For those of you who might not know, a manic-pixie-dream-girl is a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life or great change in the male protagonist. Lucy Gray is meant to fill this role, but she is also meant to fail at it. Here are the two ways this would have worked positively in the narrative for me:
1) If Collins had leaned harder into this angle. As it is, Lucy Gray comes across very one note and 2-D throughout the whole thing. Even in the moments where she is supposed to be clever and cunning, she just seems lucky. Like the odds are in her favor, one could say. Leaning deeper into the manic-pixie-dream-girl take would have meant giving her more conversations with people other than Snow and maybe pulling back on fully writing out the lyrics to one or two songs, but it would have been enough to explain her inevitable disappearance at the end of the story and even given the ending more context.
2) If other people had described her this way to me prior to reading. It defiantly doesn't help that I went in with the expectation that Lucy Gray was going to be a true precursor to Katniss. I was expecting her to both intentionally and unintentionally be throwing Capital traditions and ideals back into their faces. I was expecting her to have a bit more fire to her. What I really wanted was for her to push Snow more than she did. This is less the fault of the writing/author and more the fault of the general reading public, but it still affected my enjoyment of the story.
The major take away is this: THIS IS NOT A LOVE STORY! and everyone really needs to stop saying it is.
I could probably keep going on and on about this book. I have a lot of thoughts. And I have a lot of opinions. BUT this review is already longer than two of my previous ones combined, so I will cut myself off and let you take over. If you have ready The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes what did you think of it? Were you a fan of the way the themes were approached? Which despicable character did you hate the most? Which fan theory about Lucy Gray's future do you like the best? Let me know in the comments!
As always,
Keep wondering and stay wandering!
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