As a 29 year old 2010s Tumblr teenager, you could say that I am slightly interested in The Hunger Games. I even had one of those “Potterhead, Tribute, Candor” bios with more love for Terfling’s books (I had poor judgement then, okay?!) back in 2010.

Needless to say, I had fully embraced the cringe.

When The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes came out, I refused to read it because I didn’t want an origin story for Coriolanus Snow that would make me warm up to the bastard even just a little. But with the movie coming out and Twitter suddenly becoming like the Tumblr of 2012, the nostalgia just made me do it.

Read on to see if my concerns were allayed, is the book worth it, and should you pick it up.

About The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Review

The biggest concern I had before picking this book up was whether it was a villain origin story that objectively showed Coriolanus Snow’s descent intro cruelty and megalomania, or more of a redemption arc where his traumatic history somehow made it okay for him to be the ruthless President of the trilogy set 64 years later.

Having finished the book, I’m happy to report that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes does nothing to endear Snow to the reader. And neither is he born evil in any sense of the word. Sure, he’s a spoiled, entitled brat growing up who despite being poor after the war isn’t any bit humbled or empathetic of people’s suffering. No, with a mumbled “Snow lands on top,” this teenager thinks, nay believes, that his family name and pre-war riches entitle him to power, fame, and money.

What I particularly loved was the sheer contrast between him and Katniss. While Katniss defied the powers that be to stand up against the atrocities committed by the Capitol, Snow notices the same things and chooses not to say anything. In fact, he slowly becomes complicit in everything the Capitol does. The question of choice and how it shapes who you become as an adult is very apparent through the book.

Within the initial few pages, his entitled nature slowly peak through with the way he turns his nose up against anyone who’s not rich, a nepo baby, or Capitol. He thinks the Capitol to be superior and the District residents as rabid animals. He even dismisses another character who’s moved from District 2 to the Capitol as being pitiful “the way she clung to that backward mountain region.”

Often in reviews I talk about character growth, and in this case, we see Snow slowly growing into the evil tyrant we know and hate in the main books. The depths of cruelty he’s capable of show up in the way he reacts to his fellow classmates and the essays he writes for school.

“So he added a paragraph about his deep relief on winning the war, and the grim satisfaction of seeing the Capitol’s enemies, who’d treated him so cruelly, who’d cost his family so much, brought to their knees. Hobbled. Impotent. Unable to hurt him anymore. He’d loved the unfamiliar sense of safety that their defeat has brought. The security that could only come with power. The ability to control things. Yes, that’s what he’d loved best of all.”

Unlike one of his friends in the series, Sejanus Plinth, Snow has no ethical quagmires with siding with the Capitol or in fact, giving them further ideas about putting the Districts back in their place. There’s even a brief stint towards the end of the books where he wants to shoot all Mockingjays off the sky and make them extinct.

“Coriolanus felt sure he’d spotted his first mockingjay, and he disliked the thing on sight.”

Instead of stumbling upon villainy as a matter of circumstance, Coriolanus uses his innate sociopathy and somehow justifies the Hunger Games. This is not a person who’s hopelessly wringing his hands and silently going along with all the cruel things his government is doing. He actively appreciates it and keeps thinking of more ideas to put the Districts in their place.

“If the war’s impossible to end, then we have to control it indefinitely. With the Peacekeepers occupying the districts, with strict laws, and with reminders of who’s in charge, like the Hunger Games. In any scenario, it’s preferable to have the upper hand, to be the victor rather than the defeated.”

Coming to the Capitol and the games, there are additional ways tributes are treated poorly in the 10th edition of the Games, including where they are housed while they wait for the Games to start — the zoo. And when they get injured, the person treating them is a veterinarian. Disgusting, to say the least.

One of the other characters who was probably supposed to stand out is Lucy Gray Baird, the tribute assigned to Snow to mentor through the games. She didn’t really make much of an impact on me other than showing that Snow is capable of feelings and emotions occasionally. Which makes him even more scary as an individual, considering how he easily lets go of all of this if it will help him advance his career and in his own words, land on top.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a villain origin story I actually liked reading although I am sure not everyone will. I do prefer the main trilogy more and I will always keep reading them for the nostalgia but this book is not a bad read in itself.

I’d recommend it to anyone who’s enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy and can stomach books with main characters they absolutely cannot relate to or like.

Rating: 4 out of 5