The Ballad of songbirds and snakes : A review

Ambition will fuel him.

Competition will drive him.

But power has its price.

‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ by Suzanne Collins was arguably the most-anticipated book of 2020. Fans of ‘the Hunger Games’ have been waiting for a prequel to the best-selling series for years, hungry for more information about the history of Panem (the dystopian future of the United States of America), and the war that was alluded to so many times throughout the trilogy.

Fans speculated that the prequel would be about Mags, the eighty year-old tribute from District 4 who we came to know in the second book, ‘Catching Fire’. So imagine their surprise when we learned the prequel would be about President Coriolanus Snow, the same man who institutionalized the Hunger Games, and killed anyone who came in his way.

Now, anyone who knows me would know that I love a good origin story, so I was excited rather than confused by the prospect of an origin story for President Snow instead of Mags.

At first, I found the teenage Coriolanus Snow to be charismatic and relatable, and in some parts I even sympathised with his situation.

However, as the book progressed, I began to notice selfish ulterior motives lying underneath all his ‘good deeds’, signs of his future personality. I felt that the characteristics of young Snow did not maintain enough continuity – in one chapter he was portrayed as friendly, kind-hearted boy, and in the next he’s a sly, underhanded traitor.

One of the high-points of the book was that it illustrated the brutal Hunger Games from the point of view of the mentors as opposed to that of the tributes. While Coriolanus Snow was depicted as a blood-thirsty monster from Katniss Everdeen (the protagonist of the original trilogy)’s point of view, ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ uncovered a more vulnerable side of the villain.

‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ is a fast-paced, action-packed story, however I personally felt that it lacked connections to the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy, and did not answer enough questions. Why does Snow drink blood? Why did he support the Hunger Games? Why did he laugh while choking on his own blood? Why is he evil in the first place? An origin story is supposed to tell the readers why the antagonist became a bad person, but I thought that this was lacking in the book, and to be honest it was a little disappointing.

Other than that, however, ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ is an interesting read, with subtle references to the original trilogy. I would definitely recommend this book to fans of ‘The Hunger Games.’