Sofa Spotlight - The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins

I spent the first part of this year re-reading the Hunger Games trilogy so that I could be ready for the release of this book in May. If I’m honest, I wasn’t sure how I felt about the prequel coming out over ten years after the original books. And the original books were so good I thought it would be a tough act to follow. But I thought that maybe if the main character is someone like Finnick or Joanna Mason then maybe it would work out.

Needless to say that I had reservations when I heard that it would be President Snow’s backstory that would be the focus of the book. My worry was that it would be one of those stories where the villain has a terrible experience and becomes bitter and then misunderstood through life. What actually happened with this novel was that Snow’s story was one where Snow’s values, and who he chose to let influence him, were the driving force behind his choices. Those choices were knowingly made and led him down the path to the place where we meet him in the Hunger Games.

The story itself was long and didn’t have the excitement and drama that the original trilogy had, but there were redeeming features. Snow’s mindset and his spiral into intrigue and politics are interesting to watch and you almost hope that he can value something other than his family’s position, power and honour in order to choose a better path. There’s also an insight to the development of the Hunger Games as the book is set early in their history.

To enjoy this book though you would have to be a big fan of the original series, but having said that I’m slightly hoping that there may be another installment out there sometime in the future.