WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

Now that’s more like it!

I was pretty hard on the first Hunger Games prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. And to be fair, it really wasn’t a bad book at all. My criticism was more so based on how disappointed I was by the rushed ending.

I will maintain our spoiler-free policy here at the WeHa Book Club, but I believe it’s safe to say that a President Snow origin story centers around an innocent kid ‘breaking bad’. And while the story makes sense on the surface, I had an issue with the pacing and not fully ‘earning’ the end-result.

In this follow-up sequel, the origin story of Haymitch Abernathy, Collins got everything right that fell short in Songbirds and Snakes. The character archs were fully earned for both Haymitch and the surrounding cast of characters we have come to know in the original Hunger Games trilogy.

The introduction of Plutarch Heavensbee, Effie Trinket, Cesar Flickerman and others as well as the continued evolution of our primary villain, President Snow, helped to cement this story into the original trilogy lure, whereas Songbirds felt a little disconnected and more of a stand-alone novel rather than a prequel, in many ways.

Plus, I really just enjoyed this one!

Featuring, in my opinion, the most effective telling of the actual games section of a Hunger Games book and pairing that with incredible emotional highs and lows that I found both lasting and deeply affecting, I enjoyed the reading experience of this book as much as any other, except for perhaps Catching Fire.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but the idea that these stories take place in a future version of America had been largely a fan theory, correct? Maybe I’m just misremembering, but I can’t recall Collins ever firmly tying their world into our own until this most recent release.

Namely, the tie-in with Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven which clearly indicates that all of these stories take place in the future of our current civilization. Even the depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge in the movie trailer (see below), seems to suggest that very timeline.

Anyway, this one was a blast and I highly recommend it. Although, if you’ve read the previous four books in the series, then I’m sure you’re not waiting on a recommendation from me to pick this one up. So, I guess if you’re discouraged by the ending of the first prequel, I’d encourage you give this one a shot. Total redemption, in my mind.

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“Sunrise on the Reaping” by Suzanne Collins