Hi everyone. I'm rincey and this is
rincey reads. Today i'm back to do a book
review and i'm going to be talking about
the ballad of songbirds and snakes by
suzanne collins. And if for some reason
you're not aware, this is the prequel to
The Hunger Games series. So this prequel
takes place during the 10th annual
Hunger Games and you are following
Coriolanus Snow, whose first name in my
head this entire time I thought was
Cornelius. It wasn't until this book that I
realized that was wrong. But that's
neither here nor there and I'm mainly
just gonna refer to him as Snow because
there's a very good chance that if I had
to remember his first name I will just
refer to him as Cornelius. Just so we're
all clear and we're all starting out
from the same place. So snow is
a student at the Academy at the Capitol.
And he and his family are basically like
suffering pretty significantly after the
war. His parents have both passed away
and it's just him, his cousin, and his
grandmother who all just live in like
their penthouse but they don't have any
money at all. He works very hard to make
sure that no one realizes how poor and
hard off that their family is doing.
Basically their family had a bunch of
stuff invested in like district 13 and
then during the war, district 13 was
you know completely destroyed. And so
they basically ran out of any sort of
funds or anything along those lines. So
yeah, they are struggling a whole lot. And
so this year at the Hunger Games, it's
been decided that they are going to take
some of the students from the Academy,
some of the top students, and make them
mentors. And so getting like a tribute from
district 1 or 2 is considered
basically like the best option because
they tend to do relatively the best at
the Hunger Games because they have
better resources and things along those
lines. But snow ends up getting this girl
from district 12 whose name is Lucy snow.
He already feels like he's behind
because again he has this girl from
district 12 but he's like determined to
win because this will potentially lead to
like prizes and things like that that he
could use because, again, his family has
no money. But also he starts to like
actually see that there's potential in
this girl and things along those lines.
And the story basically like follows
a year of the Hunger Games plus some and
you get to see like how snow ends up
becoming the president snow that we know
in the regular Hunger Games trilogy.
So obviously these books are very popular.
And there was a lot of sort of hand
wringing, I suppose. Or maybe not hand
wringing but maybe like questioning when
it came to the details about this book.
I think a lot of people, including myself,
were very excited when they thought
that there was going to be a Hunger
Games prequel because with the Hunger
Games there's so much that's presented
to you and kind of being able to see how
some of that stuff comes into play or
how some of that stuff is developed or
anything along those lines could
potentially be really interesting.
There's also like a lot of people that
we know about from The Hunger Games
books who are like older than Katniss
and things like that who have competed
at other Hunger Games.
So people were wondering if it was going
to be about them. In the end, it was
announced that the book was going to be
about snow and everyone was just like--
which i think is a very understandable
response to that sort of announcement.
Because finding out that the villain is
going to get this sort of sympathetic
backstory is a little bit disconcerting.
And like, is that really as interesting?
But I think that this book overall was
kind of worth it.
Like it won't say that this book needed
to exist and I won't say that this book
made my experience with the
Hunger Games trilogy like significantly
better. But I do think that this added
some interesting history and layers to
the original trilogy that just kind of
like gives them a little extra pop.
I feel like most everyone is going to be
like wondering like whether or not this
is worth picking up and I think that it
is. Like I enjoyed reading this book and
I do think that there's some like
interesting things that Suzanne
Collins develops in here. She's still
like a really great writer. She still
loves that three-act structure. There's
three parts of this book. So it's very
clearly defined in here. She still does
those like cliffhanger chapter endings
and creates like interesting and
sympathetic characters. Although I don't
think that this is necessarily like the
best Hunger Games book by any means. But
I do think that it was like an enjoyable
reading experience. I read this book
pretty quickly. I read almost the entire
thing in a day because I just found it
to be really captivating. Like Suzanne
Collins is really great at creating
these worlds that like suck you in and
these storylines that suck you in and
like keeping you attached to the story.
But it's not quite as like captivating
as some of the other Hunger Games books
in my opinion. I do think that this book
is too long. It's over 500 pages and like
to its credit it does have like the
larger print that The Hunger Games books
all have because it's in that sort of
like young adult font size, I suppose. But
I do think that this book is too long
for what it is. And that's definitely
like one of the downsides to this book.
And there's definitely some like ebbs and
flows in terms of like my own interest
in what was happening in the story. But
when it captivated me it really
captivated me. I feel like I have to say
like I'm not like a Hunger Games
superfan. So I like have read the trilogy,
really enjoyed them, have watched the
movie, really enjoyed those too for the
most part. But that's like the extent of
my like interest in The Hunger Games.
Like I never got super into the fandom.
I don't know all of the characters by
heart, all of that stuff. I don't know the
history things like that. So you know,
take what I say with a grain of salt or
whatever. But there are a couple of
things about this book that I found like
really interesting and I think one of
them is the fact that this book, because
it's set before the Hunger Games, it's
much closer to what our current world is
which is both interesting and disturbing.
But also you can kind of see what the
evolution of the Hunger Games would look
like and it feels very realistic in my
opinion. So like I said, this is taking
place during the 10th annual Hunger
Games and there's a lot of things that don't exist
yet in The Hunger Games in this book,
which I found to be really interesting.
And for me was like kind of funny
because I was reading things in the book
and I'm just like, that feels different.
And then I realized like oh this is
taking place like years before the
Hunger Games that we've read about. And
so it makes sense that there would be
like a more toned down version of The
Hunger Games — as toned down as you know
putting a bunch of kids in an arena to
kill each other can be. But there, it
definitely is like more toned down and I
thought that that was such a like smart
choice by Suzanne Collins. And it's
probably something she realized as well.
Because it made me think about like the
way our current reality television world
works and if you think about like the
original reality TV shows, if you think
of things like the original seasons of
the real world or anything along those
lines, like those are super, super tame
compared to what currently airs on TV. Or even if you think about like the
original seasons of Survivor or the
amazing race and things like that
they are significantly more tame than
they are now where they add in all of
these twists and there's extra strings
being put into place that the producers
and the people behind the scenes can
pull and all of that stuff. And the same
thing is true in The Hunger Games. Like
there are still strings obviously that
are being pulled and manipulated but you
can see them realizing that there's
a lack of interest in The Hunger Games and
you can see sort of how they change
things in order to compensate for that.
I really enjoyed sort of seeing that and
thinking about sort of the evolution of
the Hunger Games. And a lot of that is
like discussed explicitly in this book.
Some of the things that snow and his
classmates have to do is like think
about like what they could do to make it
more interesting. And so like one of them
is the fact that there's no like gifting
system in The Hunger Games yet. And so
it's snow and his classmates who come up
with things like betting on the tribute
and the audience providing gifts for
tributes and things like that. You can
see sort of the early ruminations of
like what will be in the future. And so
there are like fun little Easter eggs
like that woven throughout the story. But
I do feel like at the same time some of
the references and callbacks were a
little bit like cheesy.
I don't want to say heavy-handed but
like kind of cheesy. There's like a line
that Lucy gray says in here where she
was like, "I didn't think the odds were in
my favor" and I was like, all right
Suzanne Collins. And there's like a whole
thing about mockingjays in this book
that I guess like explains President
Snow's sort of feelings towards
mockingjays. But at the same time I found
it to be a little bit heavy-handed.
I will say like one thing about this story
is that like nothing really feels
surprising in any way. Like I feel like
in the other books, one, you get really
attached to the tributes. So when the
tributes are dying in The Hunger Games,
you feel emotions and in this book that
doesn't really happen. And two, because
it's like the start of the rebellion and
stuff like that, there's other people who
you get attached to and then they like
die or something happens to them and I
didn't really feel that connection to
any of the characters in here. It might
possibly be because this is all told
from Snow's perspective and snow is this
character who while you're seeing this
more life "innocent' and like sympathetic
side to him, he's still pretty like
manipulative and selfish and like thinks
about people in terms of like the
benefit that they provide to him. So this
isn't like a completely like, he was such
an innocent boy and then all of these
terrible things happened to him type of
person. He has had terrible things happen
to him but he also does make a lot of
like selfish decisions that very much
inform sort of what happens to him later
on. And so I feel like that also kind of
feeds into the experience that you have
as a reader because you don't have
someone like Katniss who's extremely
sympathetic, who cares a lot about the
people around her and therefore you end
up caring a lot about the people around
her. Like in this sense like snow doesn't
really understand the people around him
very much or views them all in light of
like what they provide to him or views
them all pretty suspiciously and
therefore like you as a reader are kept
as at a distance from everyone as well.
So yeah, like every time there was a
character death of any kind, I was just
like, okay, and then
I kept moving. There are like one or two
surprises in here but even those didn't
really affect me emotionally the way
that the original trilogy did. This is a
book that's like really hard to rate. If
I'm gonna give it a goodreads rating, I
would say it's like a three, three and a
half star book. Like it's not my favorite,
like I said, but I'm not like upset at
all by the existence of this book if
that makes sense. And I do think that
like if you're a fan of The Hunger Games
and you're like intrigued by stuff like
this, like I don't think there's any real
harm in reading this book. But it doesn't
really blow me away. And so yeah, like I
said at the beginning, like does this
book need to exist?
Probably not. But am i mad that it
exists? Not at all. I just wish that you
know it was like a little bit smaller in
size. But if Suzanne Collins wants to do
a thing where she like revisits old
Hunger Games and like talks about them
and you know possibly gives us some
backstory on other characters that
exist in this universe, I would 100% be
there for it. So those are my quick
thoughts on the ballad of songbirds and
snakes. Please let me know down below, if
you've read this book, what your thoughts
were on it because I know a lot of
people have been reading it. I've been
working really hard to like avoid
Goodreads for the past couple of days
because I really didn't want other
people's opinions of this book to color
my own opinion before I had a chance to
read it and talk about it and process it
myself. But now that I have, I'm going to
definitely check out to see what other
people are saying. But feel free to leave
a comment down below letting me know
your thoughts on it if you've picked it
up already. Or if you have any like other
questions or comments about the book in
general, feel free to leave that down in
the comment section below. Or if you
don't plan on picking up the book and
just were interested to see my thoughts
on it, I'd love to know why you maybe are
not picking up the book cause I also think
that's an interesting conversation. So
yeah, that's all I have for now and
thanks for watching.
