The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
by Suzanne Collins
4/5
Scholastic Press 528 pages May 19, 2020
A Hunger Games novel set sixty-four years before the original trilogy, at the 10th Hunger Games. Eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow, from a once-powerful Capitol family that has fallen on hard times, is assigned to mentor the girl tribute from District 12, a singer named Lucy Gray Baird.
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Jim's Review
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A villain origin story that is more interested in ideas than action. Watching young Snow talk himself into every bad choice is unsettling in the best way, and the early, rough-and-ready Games are a sharp look at how a spectacle like this gets built. The last third drags, and the folk songs won't be for everyone, but the debate about human nature at its core gives readers plenty to chew on. Content note: violence. Four worms — a darker, slower companion to the trilogy.
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