With everything going on in the world, the library’s copies of the latest Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, arrived about two months late. Was it worth the wait?
The short answer, from a Hunger Games fan, is YES! The long answer is… maybe?
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place about sixty years before the original trilogy. The first two parts of the book follow the tenth Hunger Games, the annual competition slash punishment that takes twenty four children from the twelve districts of Panem and puts them in a fight to the death. This year the Capitol is trying something new: mentors. The first class of mentors includes students from the Capitol in their final year of school. Eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is one of those students, and he is assigned the female tribute from District 12.
Weighing in at 528 pages, this book, full of surprises and insights, is not what I would call light reading. It raises a lot of questions about Panem and about future villain Snow. The book tackles war, reformation, poverty, hatred, ambition… It makes you think.
Personally, I like this book. It was a good read. As a Hunger Games fan, I would recommend this to other fans. But fair warning: if you haven’t read The Hunger Games, you’ll need to after reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Then, you’ll probably want to read all four of them again.
-Liz Strauss, Teen/Outreach Services Librarian