Rating: 3 stars
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.
To be honest, I haven’t really read too many villain stories in my life. Not because I’ve never been interested in how villains from stories I like became who they are, just haven’t really read any. So with this book, I wasn’t sure what to expect when reading it. As someone who enjoyed reading this series, I didn’t really have too many expectations with this one because I knew the world Katniss and Snow are a part of isn’t a good one. And I knew the problems with the world of Panem started way before Snow was President.
What I found to be enjoyable about The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is the Hunger Games that Snow participated in as a mentor and the tribute from District 12 he was paired with Lucy Gray. I thought it was interesting to see how things were in the Capitol during Snow’s youth. I also enjoyed seeing how the Hunger Games were in the beginning verses whenever the trilogy following Katniss started. From the Gamemakers still trying to figure out the Games and how to make them more interesting to students in the Capitol being paired with tributes with an incentive if the tribute they were paired with were to win the Games. I also enjoyed in the beginning seeing the relationship between Snow and Lucy Gray as Snow did what he could to help her survive in the Hunger Games. I enjoyed seeing their dynamic because it was something I wasn’t expecting when reading this book. Lucy Gray just wasn’t the type of girl I was expecting Snow to be interested in so it was interesting to see how their relationship played out.
I felt like as a whole, the first half of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was enjoyable and hard for me to put down as I wanted to find out what would happen next. There was just the right amount of story and getting insight into what was going on in Snow’s world for me to feel like I had a good idea of where the story was heading. I also felt like I was getting a good idea of how Snow became the villain we’ve come to know through some of the choices he made in ensuring Lucy’s victory. The best example that comes to mind for me involves Lucy’s handkerchief as it was a very cunning way to make sure she didn’t get hurt by the snakes during the Games. I also felt like as a reader his thoughts when it came to his peers also helped too because he was already in the mindset of getting ahead of his peers and saying certain things in order to get a specific response from those he was talking to. I basically felt like in the beginning of this book, as a reader I could already see how he became who I came to know from the trilogy.
As The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes continued after the Games were over though, I felt my interest in what was going on slowly waning. I feel like in a lot of ways it was because what happened after the Games just wasn’t all that interesting to me. Yes, the way things went caught me off guard originally and I was interested to see how things were going for Snow in his life as a Peacekeeper. But I felt like after a certain point of that story, I was just interested in seeing his life leading up to the events in the trilogy instead of getting his story after his stunt as a mentor in the Games. His life as a Peacekeeper was just really dull and I felt like it did nothing for his story other than confirm further how much he cares about the Capitol over anyone and anything. This is demonstrated through the way his relationships with Sejanus Plinth and Lucy Gray end.
As a whole, I found the way Snow’s character develops in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes interesting since you can slowly see how he becomes the villain he’s known to be in the trilogy. However, I found his villain story extremely dull once the tenth Hunger Games are over and he’s working as a Peacekeeper in District 12, which made it extremely hard for me to continue reading his story to see what happened next. So while I enjoyed reading this book, there were some elements to it that made it hard for me to enjoy it fully as a villain origin story. I think I would’ve enjoyed it more if once the Games were over, the story focused on his life closer to when the events in the trilogy took place over his life as a Peacekeeper once the Games he participated in as a mentor were over.
