WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

Ugh!! Sooooooo close!!

This one was a real let down for me and I hate that I’m opening my review with that. I had heard this was a bit of a regression in the Hunger Games series but as I read through this first crack at a prequel, I couldn’t understand why.

Sure, it lacked a lot of the elements that made the original trilogy popular:

• A strong young female protagonist, that is clearly the embodiment of good, born into an evil and unjust world.
• Easy to follow concepts of unfairness that go hand-in-hand with a drastic disparity of wealth. A clear oppressor vs. oppressed dynamic.
• Linear story telling with slick action sequences that keep a younger audience engaged while subtly slipping in more complex themes in an easy-to-understand way.

There was a lot to like about the original trilogy (I know I did), but that doesn’t mean a stylistic change can’t work! Recent examples that come to mind are the new Game of Thrones spinoff series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Tonally, completely different than GoT or even House of the Dragon, but arguably the best entry into the entire series.

I loved the idea of doing a prequel, rather than a sequel here. Let’s explore the origin story of the original trilogy’s primary antagonist, President Snow. It’s an important lesson in the idea that not everyone is born good or evil. Circumstances – both of our control and beyond – lead us into pivotal situations that shape the person we ultimately become.

For about 85% of this book, I absolutely loved the story telling. You could see cracks, sure, but it was subtle. You could see both the innocence of a young man, not yet corrupted by his tragic circumstances, as well as the factors that would ultimately lead him to ‘break bad’.

But they lost me at the end. And I hate to admit that because for so much of the book, I thought everyone had gotten this wrong. That people were just disappointed that it was different from the trilogy and thus, gave it a lower score than it deserved. Alas, this wasn’t the case.

Without getting into specific plot points, it almost read as if there was only one minute left in the exam and Collins had to rush out a conclusion before the teacher made her turn in her paper. It’s rare to say this about a book that I only gave a 3.5 star rating to, but I genuinely wish it was longer.

Collins did so much good work to explain who Snow used to be and how his situation led him to turn into the Snow we know from the trilogy, some 65 years later, and then it was all squandered by such an abrupt change at the very end of the story. I personally would have preferred more of an Anikin Skywalker pacing to the heel turn. Spread it out over a longer epic of even multiple books.

Oh well. It is what it is. In the end, I still thoroughly enjoyed a huge portion of my overall reading experience and still believe that the hate – wherever this is any – is largely undeserved. It was a great villain origin story, but it was a little rushed at the end. That’s still a good read, in my opinion.

I hear from Alli that the next prequel, entitled Sunrise on the Reaping, is arguably the best one of the series so I’m looking forward to that. Just picked it up from the library yesterday afternoon. In the meantime… sigh.

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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins