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

You might want to take a peek at your Kindle price vs. the hard cover price.
Here’s a hint: An ebook costs next to nothing to publish, and should not cost more than the hard cover!

In the time of Katniss Everdeen, Coriolanus Snow is the tyrannical president of Panem, a cruel man who uses the Hunger Games as a weapon against any who would rebel. But once, long ago, he was just a aristocratic teenage boy in the Capitol, raised in the shadow of a terrifying rebellion that gave birth to the Hunger Games.

“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is a look back at the early days of Panems dystopian tyranny, and a glimpse of how Snow turned into the president he would later become. This tale is a very different one from Suzanne Collins other Hunger Games tales, whether its the third-person narrative, the cold and ambitious protagonist, or the general feeling of hopelessness and ruin that you know is not really going to get any better.

Born to the purple but raised in poverty, Coriolanus Snow is the only hope his grandmother and cousin Tigris have for any kind of comfort and dignity. He has to acquire a university prize and brilliant career in the upper echelons of the Capitols society, without ever betraying that he and his family are surviving on boiled cabbage and old outgrown clothes. If not, the Snow family will descend into well, being ordinary poor people in the Districts, and Snow cant bear the thought.

But then hes dealt a blow. When various young mentors are assigned to the Hunger Games tributes, hes given the girl tribute from District 12: Lucy Gray Baird, a strange girl with a luscious singing voice and plenty of stage presence. Though he thinks shes crazy at first, Snow is determined to make the best of his assignment, and he even begins to believe that Lucy Grays charm and charisma can somehow help him.

The days before the Tenth Hunger Games are cruel to both the mentors and the tributes there are bombings, venomous snakes, torture, and the psychopathic Dr. Gaul. But Snows efforts to save Lucy Gray from death in the arena, based on both his growing feelings and his desperation for success, will push them both to terrible extremes revealing to Snow who he truly is, and what hell do to save himself.

In “The Hunger Games,” Suzanne Collins depicted District 12 as a painfully impoverished place where starvation was only a missed meal away. And in “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” she depicts a different kind of poverty in the Capitol its a relatively luxurious place full of wealth and parties, but theres a rotten layer to this crumbling society, a sense of dark decay that underlies Snows world. And she reminds us constantly that the Capitol is still scarred by the war between Panem and the rebels, which got so bad that wealthy people cannibalized their servants in the streets.

Collins also switches up her writing here rather than the first-person perspective of the Hunger Games trilogy, she relates Snows teenage adventures in the third person. Her prose is tense and taut, with moments of horror (the deaths of some of the tributes) or chilling sadness (Tell her that we are all so sorry she has to die) spattered across it. The plot does grow less intense after the Hunger Games, when it seems like Snow has had to embrace a new life, but then takes a sharp twist into tragedy.

And though hes the protagonist, Coriolanus Snow is never quite a likable person. We know where hes coming from and what drives him, but hes still a very chilly, proud, selfish person motivated by a belief that he is genuinely and inherently better than everyone else. When hes around Lucy Gray, Collins slips in some actual human emotion, which builds up gradually throughout the book but Collins never lets us forget for long that hes not a good person, as seen when he talks about killing the mockingjays.

And hes backed by characters who arent necessarily what they seem. While theres the compassionate and slightly melodramatic Sejanus as a counterpoint to Snows more amoral approach, Lucy Gray is an elusive, mercurial presence that is hard to nail down. And Dr. Gaul is genuinely scary, a mad scientist who apparently does mad science entirely because she can.

Theres a deep sadness at the heart of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” a knowledge that this is a story that cant have a happy ending, and cant have a hero. But it is a fine dystopian tale, giving greater depth to the history of Panem.

I seldom pre-order a book, but I loved The Hunger Games even if I am not a fantasy books buff. Everything The Hunger Games book was this book is not. The writing is rambling, making it hard to keep interest in the events since the characters are not really engaging. The vivid imagery of The Hunger Games is absent from the new book, to just flash a glimpse here or there. I wish I waited to see the reviews before I bought.

I recall a villan that once said, hope is the only thing stronger than fear.
Now you can enjoy that same villan’s origin story that is completely devoid of even a tiny speck of any hope.
Wasted dynamic side characters just to prove how smart and charming Snow is.
The Anakin comparisons are a bit too on the nose. Now take away Luke, Leia, and Obi wan and you have this book.

A book that cost this much for kindle edition should have page numbers know how could the book is going to be also why is the kindle action more expensive the. The print version still pretty good so far

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