The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (a Hunger Games Novel)

by Suzanne Collins | Science Fiction & Fantasy |
ISBN: 1338635174 Global Overview for this book
Registered by PokPok of Vista, California USA on 7/6/2020
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1 journaler for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by PokPok from Vista, California USA on Monday, July 6, 2020
8 stars: Very good

From the back cover:

Ambition will fuel him. Competition will drive him. But power has its price.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, 18 year old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot a mentor in the games. The once mighty House of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, out wit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He's been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute ... and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

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I loved this book, found it very compelling. It does veer into "7 star" category once it leaves the Capitol and goes to District 12. Having said that, I always wanted to keep reading. Snow is portrayed as almost sympathetic, or at least sometimes sympathetic. We know where his character will ultimately end up, so we are left with his complicated morality. Lucy Baird, is not Katniss Everdeen in personality (she's closer to Luna Lovegood) but has the same effect on people - and unlike Katniss, she knows it and how to use it. I enjoyed seeing the evolution of the Capitol and the games. In this book, the Capitol is in near ruins from the war. Many of its people are starving, it is not the lap of luxury. Furthermore, the games are very different. They are held in a physical arena, with nothing cleaned from the year prior - ie bloodstains, etc. There are some weapons, but few. Mostly the participants starve. Snow comes up with some ideas to make the games be more watched in the districts - including betting on victors and the gifts of food.

There is one person, the Dean of the Academy, who hates Snow and treats him terribly throughout. SPOILER. In the books final pages, we find out that the Dean came up with the idea of the games, when drunk, for a school assignment. Snow's father turned in the assignment against the Dean's wishes. This ruins their friendship and the Dean turns to morphling (morphine) to deal with his pain and knowing what he unleashed on Panem. Snow is morally conflicted in some ways about the games, but is manipulated by the sadistic Gamekeeper. In the epilogue SPOILER he is interned to work for her, likely a major step to becoming the president we know from the series.

An Easter Egg is that Tigris is Snow's cousin. She is a minor character in Mockingjay, and we know she helps the Rebels. We don't know how she got from full support in this book,to that point.

Some passages I liked:

If the people who were supposed to protect you played so fast and loose with your life... then how did you survive? Not by trusting them, that's for sure. And if you couldn't trust them, who could you trust? All bets were off.

Without the threat of death it wouldn't be much of a lesson" said Dr. Gaul. "What happened in the arena? That's humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, your education, family, background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That's mankind in its natural state. ... you can blame it on the cicumstances, the environment you made, but you made the choices. No one else. It's a lot to take in all at once, but its essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need."

People aren't so bad, really" Lucy Baird said. "It's what the world does to them. Like us, in the arena. We did things in there we'd never have considered if they'd just left us alone. "
"I don't know. I killed Mayfair. There was no arena in sight."
"But only to save me." She thought it over. "I think there's a natural goodness built into human beings. You know when you've stepped across the line into evil, and its your life's challenge to try to stay on the right side of the line."

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