He’s clever, charming, and cunning, with a soft spot for loved ones, and he shares with the average Capitol citizen an ambivalence to the Games. The young Snow is a compelling character: a poor little rich boy, stripped of all his wealth, trying desperately to bring glory back to his family name. Coriolanus becomes the one to change that. It’s a stark contrast to Katniss’ almost extravagant welcome, where she dined on rich foods and wore a custom-made gown. Instead of enjoying cushy Capitol luxuries, the tributes are corralled into cages and barely fed. The 10th Hunger Games is one that readers are unfamiliar with, built on a specific cruelty that can’t be fluffed up by Hollywood love stories, flashy costumes, or a tie-in makeup line.

Secretly broke and banking on success in the Games to snag a scholarship to university, Coriolanus becomes determined to succeed at all costs. Desperate to maintain control over the citizens of Districts and the Capitol alike, the Gamemakers task Coriolanus, a high-achieving student at the Academy, with finding a way to get people hyped. Capitol citizens don’t even watch the games, finding them too brutal to stomach. The book, while not an essential addition to canon, layers on darkly satisfying implications to the original series and makes for a compelling return to the Hunger Games world.Ĭompared to the Games that Katniss Everdeen survived, the gauntlets of Snow’s era are devoid of pomp and circumstance - there are no stylists or costumes or training scores. Why focus on and potentially sympathize with a tyrant who lost the right for sympathy by forcing innocent children to kill one another? But in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Collins weaves together the origin story about the diabolical Snow with revelations of how the Hunger Games series came to be.

On paper, it’s an odd vantage point from which to revisit the world, especially when the main series focused on rebellion against oppressors and felt thematically complete by the final installment. Instead of being president of Panem, he’s now a student assigned to mentor a tribute - the first time such a role is present in one of the games. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place decades before the original trilogy, during the 10th Hunger Games, and focuses on the villain of the original series, Coriolanus Snow. A Hunger Games book arriving during massively uncertain times seems like it could be an Onion headline, but Suzanne Collins’ new prequel was announced over a year ago.

The ballad of songbird