Sara 's Reviews > The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

I went into this Hunger Games spinoff not knowing anything, including that it was a prequel. I'd also forgotten almost everything about the original trilogy including everything about President Snow so I also didn't realize this was going to be a villain origin story.

Overall, I thought that Collins handled Coriolanus' psychological progression really well - from a boy reckoning with hunger and trauma to a man who finally crosses the line from an innate sense of horror about subjecting people to the Hunger Games to the justification of it. Collins also gives us other characters who face the same horrors but come to different conclusions: his sister Tigris, his frenemy Sejanus, his tribute Lucy. So I think the point is made that crossing that line is a choice, or comes from a series of choices. Yet, with the exception of Tigris, all the characters have moral blindspots and are not free from causing others harm.

I do agree with others that the ending felt rushed and less intentional then the rest of the book.

One thing I wonder is if Collins ever toyed with the idea of telling the story from multiple perspectives; I would have been interested in Lucy's perspective, for example.

Even though I devoured the original trilogy, I found that in the ensuing decade+ that I am finding it more difficult to stomach the brutality and violence inherent in this story. It is not a criticism of the book, but a reflection on myself as a consumer of books and other media.