After loving The Hunger Games trilogy, I thought it would be cool to read The Ballad of Songbird and Snakes before watching the movie. If you liked the movie, you need to read the book because it’s so much better. The first part of this review is spoiler-free, but there are some theories I wanted to get out of my head which do contain spoilers for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Don’t worry, there is a spoiler warning.

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About The Book 📚

Title: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games #0)

Author: Suzanne Collins

Publication Date: May 2020

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Genre: Young Adult Romance, Science Fiction (Dystopian)

Pages: 520

Setting: Panem (United States)

Content Warnings: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/da391079-005c-41bf-8c1a-0fb155cd7677/content_warnings

My Review

› The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes is a tense and dark dystopian story. I don’t think the cover accurately portrays the vibe of this book. This is the coming-of-age story of President Snow, the villain of The Hunger Games trilogy.

“You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s 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. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about that you learned tonight.” ~ Dr. Gaul

› In an interview, Suzanne Collins said she’s interested in presenting these philosophical theories to young people through story-telling. Her writing is influenced by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Dr. Gaul teaches Coriolanus that humans are brutish and need political authority to rule (like Hobbes), Locke believes in reason and that humans could learn to respect each other (like Lucy Gray), Rousseau believed that humans are motivated by self-love and self-preservation (like the Covey).

“You’ve no right to starve people, to punish them for no reason. No right to take away their life and freedom. Those are things everyone is born with, and they’re not yours for the taking. Winning a war doesn’t give you that right. Having more weapons doesn’t give you that right. Being from the Capitol doesn’t give you that right. Nothing does.” ~ Sejanus Plinth

› Collins was also inspired by William Wordsworth’s poem Lucy Gray and “The Life of Coriolanus” in Plutarch’s Lives by W. H. Weston. “The story exhibits the ruin of a noble nature by pride.” His contempt for the commons leads to his demise. Shakespeare also tells a story about Coriolanus.

› Collins has also compared Coriolanus to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and said, “She seems to be saying that naturally good creatures exposed to an abusive world result in monsters.”

“People aren’t so bad, really,” she said. “It’s what the world does to them.” ~ Lucy Gray

› The Treaty of Treason ended the Dark Days and led to the beginning of the Hunger Games. Ten years later, Coriolanus is 18 years old. His parents are dead and he’s living with his cousin Tigris and Grandma’am. They are living in poverty because his parents had all their money invested in District 13 which was bombed. He’s graduating from school soon and the 10th anniversary of Reaping Day is approaching. He learns a new law will be passed making his family pay taxes on their apartment, which they won’t be able to afford. He feels he must do something to save his family’s reputation.

› “Coriolanus released the fistful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again.”

› The graduating students in the Capitol are assigned tributes. Coriolanus is assigned Lucy Gray Bird, a young woman from District 12, who will compete in the Hunger Games and he is meant to mentor her. If she wins then he will win a scholarship for university. He believes that attending university will solve all of his family’s financial problems. Lucy immediately gains Capitol attention by putting a snake down a young woman’s dress during the Reaping. Then she sings: “Nothing you can take from me was ever worth keeping.”

› In The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, you will meet Lucy Gray and see how Coriolanus became a monster. However – it left me with a lot of questions, which leads me to believe that Collins was planning on publishing more than just this one prequel.

› Collins gives plenty of description and incredible world-building. The characters were interesting but lacked growth. There are some cheesy call-back lines and a ton of name drops from The Hunger Games. Some readers have said it’s too long, but I didn’t feel like there was any fluff. If you’ve read The Hunger Games trilogy then there’s nothing in The Ballads of Songbirds and Snakes that will surprise you. There are some minor plot holes and character decisions that don’t make sense. Yet, I couldn’t put this book down! I wonder how I would have felt if I read this before The Hunger Games.

› APPEAL FACTORS
Storyline: plot-driven, world-building, tragic, open-ending
Pace: slow
Tone: angsty, bittersweet, high-drama, dark
Writing Style: conversational, descriptive
Character: awkward, brooding, complex, flawed, sarcastic, unlikeable

› Read Alikes:
Red Rising Saga by Pierce Brown
Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard
The Running Man by Stephen King
Divergent series by Veronica Roth
Arc of a Scythe series by Neal Shusterman
Ready Player One series by Ernest Cline
The Young Elites series by Marie Lu
Maze Runner series by James Dashner

› In the past I have given a rating out of ten and converted that to a star rating, but I’m no longer giving a star rating here on my blog. I will continue to do that on Goodreads and The Story Graph.

› Final Thoughts
Featuring flawed characters, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is a bleak prequel about morality, human nature, survival, and the corruption of power.

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There will probably be spoilers in the comments as well!
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› Okay let’s get into some theories here. I’m going to try and put this into some kind of chronological order so it makes sense. TBOSAS = The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. THG = The Hunger Games

“Well, as they said, it’s not over until the mockingjay sings.”

› Coriolanus hates the mockingjays. Lucy Gray knew this as they had a conversation about them and there is a scene at the end of TBOSAS where she sings The Hanging Tree song driving Coriolanus to lose his mind and shoot his gun in a circle. This info must get passed down so that eventually the mockingjay becomes the symbol of rebellion against Snow.

“She could fly around District 12 all she liked, but she and her mockingjays could never harm him again.”

› Do you know who else would’ve known about his distaste of mockingjays? Tigris. And she was a stylist for some of the Hunger Games. Did she give Maysilee the pin? Maybe Tigris saw how Coriolanus was becoming a tyrant and wanted to try and stop him. What was the last straw that made her move out and start doing the surgeries to look feline?

› What if Lucy Gray fled District 12 after the encounter in the woods, heading to District 13 to seek refuge. Maybe she was even pregnant. She has the baby and that baby grows up to be Alma Coin – the President of District 13 in THG. Who knows about the significance of the mockingjay because her mother explained everything that happened with Snow. President Coin even had grey hair and eyes in THG. Like Lucy, Alma is smart, cunning, and ruthless.

› And the last part of Wordsworth’s Lucy Gray poem shows that some believe Lucy Gray lives on:
“O’er rough and smooth she trips along,
And never looks behind;
And sings a solitary song
That whistles in the wind.”

A song that whistles in the wind? – Sound familiar?

› Maybe Lucy also told Maude about Coriolanus’s hatred for the mockingjays, who then had a child – Katniss’s father Mr. Everdeen. In THG we know that Mr. Everdeen liked the mockingjays – where did his love for them come from? I think he knew of their significance and wanted to pass this down to his daughters, Katniss and Primrose.

› Mr. Everdeen was known to be a good singer – just like Maude. Maude was known to be able to memorize lyrics and melody – and so she taught her son The Hanging Tree song and The Meadow song and then he passed that along to his daughters. Maude also showed her son the cabin by the lake. Maude knew about plants, such as catniss – did he learn this from one of them and choose that name for his daughter? Imagine Snow’s surprise when Katniss started to sing the Meadow Song to Rue in the arena when he was sure everyone had forgotten about Lucy Gray and her music long ago.

› Katniss’s mother was 17 when her best friend, Maysilee, was chosen as tribute in the 50th Hunger Games along with Haymitch. I think the book that was just announced, Sunrise on the Reaping, will reveal the legacy of the Mockingjay pin. The blurb says this new book will begin on the morning of the reaping for the 50th Hunger Games when Haymitch was chosen as tribute with Maysilee. Did Coin give the pin to Maysilee to become a symbol of rebellion? Did Coin then direct Maysilee’s family to leave it to Madge who was then instructed to give it to Katniss? Expected publication is March 2025 and I can’t wait. I hope we get to learn more about Alma Coin and Trigis. The movie adaptation is listed as “in development” on IMDB and is set to release in 2026.

What do you think?

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