As the prequel to the well-known Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes allows the reader to explore the motives behind the villain of the original series. We get to dive deeper into Coriolanus Snows’ teenage years and see his thoughts to get a richer understanding of him. The book is set 64 years before the original series, during the 10th annual Hunger Games. Coriolanus Snow is an academy student in the Capitol. The students are all assigned tributes to mentor. The tributes from higher districts have a higher chance of winning, and thus are more popular among the Capitol. Coriolanus ends up being assigned to the runt of the group, the District 12 girl. That girl is Lucy Gray. She is part of the Covey, and she enjoys signing and performing. At the reaping, she makes a big scene by dropping a snake down one girl’s back. Everyone in the academy is talking about her. At this time, tributes were not treated nearly as nicely. They face rough conditions not only during the games, but before too. Coriolanus finds himself struggling to be a good mentor. He wants to win the Plinth Prize, but that is also achieved by making a tribute turn into a spectacle. His goal is to make Lucy Gray a Capitol favorite, while hers is simply to survive and return to her original life. We start to see hints of romance between Lucy and Coriolanus, but by reading his inner monologue it becomes clear that his motives are elsewhere. He feels a sort of control over Lucy, as if she belongs to him. This is where we can see conflict appear in the book, and Snow’s actions reveal who he is at heart.
This book shows many connections to the original series. It is an eye-opening prequel that only helps to strengthen the anger towards Snow. We can see his slow descent into madness and get insight on his origin story. I enjoyed reading this book because I found many relationships between Lucy Gray and Katniss. As a fan of the original trilogy, it was fun to read this book because I got to enjoy the story on a deeper level. I would rate this book an overall four stars. A new movie about this book has also been released, which was a great depiction of the plot. This book isn’t one of my favorites in the series, but it fills in a gap and ties off the series in a very satisfying way. I think that all readers should get into the Hunger Games series and read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes along with it.