This book!

I went into The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes expecting a fluffy cash grab that would show the love-to-hate Coriolanus Snow in a positive light until something terrible happens and boom, now he's a bad guy. I expected to be back into first person, and I expected the story to be rather straightforward with a couple of flash twists. Well, literally all of that is wrong.

This is a novel that's obviously crafted with care and time. Collins put effort into this novel, and it shows. I'm going to tag the rest of this for spoilers. Some of it is big spoilers, others are just about the characterization and the like, but I do think this book is best experienced without a ton of knowledge of what you're getting into.

The brief note I'll put above the spoilers that's not really a spoiler but just goes for tone is that this is a book about the internal struggles of Coriolanus Snow. I'm not great at doing light spoilers that don't spoil major things, so I'm not going to go on much from there, but I do highly recommend this book. It's not a book that feels at-all similar to [b:The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset|7938275|The Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset (The Hunger Games, #1-3)|Suzanne Collins|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1360094673l/7938275._SY75_.jpg|11349083], so keep that in mind, but again, I highly recommend it.

Spoiler

Snow, as our only POV character, is a complex case. He's definitely not a hero, but he's not evil incarnate either. He starts off as pitiable, honestly. The Snow family is broke, and the two children remaining (who are cousins) are both orphans being raised by their grandmother. We quickly and continuously come to realize their grandmother is pretty prejudiced towards those born in the districts. In fact, we're only ten years from the Dark Days of the war, and being inside the Capitol, we see a lot of disdain for those born in districts. Snow carries some of this disdain, although maybe not as much as some of the others.

Spoiler

We see early on that what matters to Snow is power. He wants money because it brings power. He sees Peacekeepers, the Hunger Games, and the like as conventions of control and therefore power. He has and maintains the view, which is reinforced by multiple events throughout the book, that humanity, without a strong force enforcing civility, would decline into an animalistic state. In other words, atrocities done in the name of control are ultimately for the greater good.

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This view is in direct contrast to the one person, besides himself, Snow would put himself at risk for. From the moment we meet Lucy Gray Baird at her reaping, Snow is captivated. She's a performer first and everything else second. She enthralls Snow, and he breaks the rules for her. He steals from the Academy to give her food. He helps her smuggle rat poison into the arena. Finally, he keeps Dr. Gaul's surprise in the arena from killing her. This last bit appears to entirely derail Snow's life plan.

Spoiler

More on that. Coriolanus Snow plans to usurp his poverty status and bring his family name back into importance in the Capitol. He's an excellent student, one of the twenty-four Hunger Games mentors, and one of the few who legitimately earned his way in. He plans to win a 'prize', or a scholarship, to the University in the Capitol, to excel there, and to continue to rise in power. His grandmother constantly talks about "Coriolanus Snow, future president of Panem", and while Snow isn't entirely consciously on board, he's not opposed. His life plan is to essentially pull his family back into the upper echelon by working hard to acquire money and power. His actions during the tenth Hunger Games appear to derail that.

Spoiler

Of course, the Academy dean, Casca Highbottom, and the Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul find out about his cheating, and as such, expel him and give him the option to 'save face' and sign up for twenty years of Peacekeeper duty. Snow takes this more or less in stride, even though it means he'll never go to University and won't be able to rise in power in the way he wanted. Still, he decides he'll go to District 12 and try and meet up with Lucy one way or another, even if he doesn't know if she's there. He then learns he did graduate from the Academy, meaning he can rise up the ranks of the Peacekeepers as an officer, and he reformats his life plan to gain money and prestige through his military exploits instead of political ones. So his life is back on track.

Spoiler

Then we take a slightly different direction the book, and it gives us real insight into who Snow is as a character. Throughout the book, we consistently see how Snow spins and angles things to help him rise in prestige, following the family motto of "Snow lands on top". He reaches out to Lucy immediately, not out of respect for her as a human who will likely soon be dead, but because he believes it's in his best interest to get her to trust him. He takes many of his early risks because making her a star and keeping her alive for at least a while in the games will only help him engage the audience. It isn't until right up to the games where his infatuation with Lucy takes over as the main motivation for his actions.

Spoiler

Anyway, with Snow as a Peacekeeper in District 12 and Sejanus Plinth joining him, they end up finding out Lucy was released back to the district and is going back to putting on shows. Snow and his new gang of friends go to these shows, and the romance that both Snow and Lucy had felt building catches fire. They spend time together on off days and before and after shows, all with Sejanus in tow. Well, Lucy has a past in District 12, namely Billy Taupe, an old lover who two-timed on her with the mayor's daughter and ended up getting her placed in the Hunger Games. Billy wants Lucy back, though, and this is where we really see into Snow's head. He's insanely jealous. He doesn't like that Lucy sings songs about how Billy hurt her. He doesn't like that Billy shows up and tries to get Lucy to run away. He really doesn't like Billy. In fact, there are multiple times where he suspects Lucy is going to go back to Billy or has gone back to Billy. Even after Billy dies, Snow still has hesitations about Lucy regarding him.

Spoiler

Before Billy dies, he does set off a major string of events. Sejanus following Snow around leads to Billy and Sejanus having some time to talk. Billy ends up more or less recruiting Sejanus to the rebellion and convincing him to run away with a handful of people towards what we know is the ruins of District 13. Snow figures this out, and then Sejanus tells him. Snow betrays Sejanus, now having concrete proof, and we see how Snow treats someone who sees him like a brother when that person presents a small bit of danger to Sejanus' plans.

Spoiler

Then we get into the last bit of the book. This is almost certainly going to be the most controversial section of the book. Snow could still be redeemed here as a character (well, if this wasn't a prequel), and many readers will want him to be saved or at least absolved, more or less, due to a tragedy that befalls him. Snow finds out he's to become an officer, but due to the evidence that he murdered the mayor's daughter floating around somewhere, he doesn't see staying in Capitol-controlled areas. Lucy wants to run away, like Billy was talking about before, and not seeing any other options, Snow does what he thinks is best for Snow and decides to join her. He meets up with Lucy, and they start their journey. They take a quick pitstop at a lake in the woods, where Snow is presented with a choice. He comes across the evidence that links him to a murder, and he's mere meters from a lake where he can dispose of said evidence.

Spoiler

He can dispose of the evidence and keep running away with Lucy, getting the life of leisure with very little reason for people to search for him, or he can dispose of the evidence and go back to his life, hopefully rising up through the military ranks. He quickly realizes he doesn't want to live in the wilds, even if it is with Lucy. He goes through the process of deciding to just tell Lucy to quickly realizing she'd now be even more dangerous than the evidence he needs to destroy. His paranoia, that shows up a few times throughout the book, flares (and it should be mentioned he's partially delirious due to snake venom), and he decides Lucy already knows all of the things he's done and is thinking and is, therefore, trying to kill him. He begins unloading into the woods, knowing he needs to kill her. Does he? Probably, but who knows. The whole scene turns into a fever dream, more or less.

To sum it all up,

Spoiler

this book doesn't change much. It doesn't have any major impact on the future, as is the case with nearly all prequels. What it does is tell a story, the story of Coriolanus Snow. It shows how power-hungry he's been throughout his life. It show's he's not a good person, but he's not necessarily just a cartoon villain. It shows the growth of the philosophy he's (and probably most Capitol-born people, if we're being honest) internalized, from a formless 'the Capitol is necessary because of how terribly the districts treated my family during the war' to a full Hobbsian 'without the Capitol, we're all animals. Those of us who see that truth need to be in power over those who don't. Personal freedom is not worth the chaos and war that would come without the control of the Capitol'.

Spoiler

I don't see this book as biting political commentary. I don't see it as game-changing to a series published a decade ago. There will be lots of people who have a problem with that, who didn't want a story just for a story's sake. I saw this as a great story about the internal conflict inside an incredibly driven young man. Does he choose what a hero would, at least as derived as what a hero is from the original trilogy? No, but he's also not a hero. Coriolanus Snow chooses what Coriolanus Snow thinks is best for Coriolanus Snow at literally every point he has the choice to do so. He didn't 'develop' from a selfish and driven character to a hero, but he went through rises and falls, internal conflicts, and came out hardened and set on his personal philosophy. Sometimes character development isn't A->B but instead a looping path of A->A1->A2->B->A2->C->A, and that's a human story, too.

A few other notes:

Spoiler

Yeah, there's a romance, and yeah, it feels like an insta-love, but we quickly realize it's pure infatuation, and as soon as there's another option that looks better for Snow, he takes it.

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The characters come off a bit one-note, I suppose. Lucy Gray is a free spirit who believes freedom is key, refusing to become a slave to either the Capitol or the Rebellion and just wants to live free. The only sign there's internal conflict there is Billy and later Snow deciding a lot of her niceness is a façade and that really, she's willing to do whatever she thinks is best for herself, too, and doesn't care much about the freedom of others. Sejanus is rebellion through and through, and he believes all people should be treated equally and not in some sort of tiered system. None of the other characters get enough screen time to have development. I would argue that settling into your beliefs as you determine what's right and wrong is fine character development, but I understand why people don't. Ultimately, this is a story of people interpreting the same series of events in ways that further their own world view and become more set in that world view. I'm personally good with that.

Spoiler

The ending is off-putting. The protagonist, who's definitely not a hero, acts in his own best interests at the expense of many others and gets the reward. The epilogue almost feels like the end of an adventure novel where the protagonist finishes off those who wronged him and gets to live the lush life because they're the hero. Except in our case, our protagonist gets that stuff and is not a hero. So yeah, off-putting. I don't know if that will play well with audiences or not, but I loved it.

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All in all, we have a story of internal struggle, and I dug it hardcore. 5/5