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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Paperback – International Edition, July 1, 2021
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- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHARPER COLLINS
- Publication dateJuly 1, 2021
- Dimensions5.63 x 1.34 x 7.8 inches
- ISBN-100702309516
- ISBN-13978-0702309519
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Product details
- Publisher : HARPER COLLINS; International Edition (July 1, 2021)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 0702309516
- ISBN-13 : 978-0702309519
- Item Weight : 12.3 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.63 x 1.34 x 7.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #72,867 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Suzanne Collins has had a successful and prolific career writing for children's television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Collins made her mark in children's literature with the New York Times bestselling five-book series for middle-grade readers The Underland Chronicles, which has received numerous accolades in both the United States and abroad. In the award-winning The Hunger Games trilogy, Collins continues to explore the effects of war and violence on those coming of age. Collins lives with her family in Connecticut.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2020
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Amazon delivered my copy early, so I'm going to do a spoiler free review and then a spoilery one. Pardon if this winds up sounding like an English paper. I have thought so much on the morals and questions in this book that I feel like I should have read this in school.
Note: I'm writing this review with the express belief that you, reader, have at least read the book description. Otherwise why are you reading this review?
I want to start this off by saying two things. One, this is not a hero story. Snow is never once, in my opinion, shown to be a hero in this in what we modern folks would call a hero. He's no Luke Skywalker or redeemed villain. This isn't some sob backstory to explain "why the bad guy is bad." This is yet another set of layers to the onion that is Snow.
Second, this book is dark. It's been a minute since I read the original trilogy, but I swear it wasn't quite as graphic as this book was. Cannibalism is mentioned, and it's shown/talked about that someone sawed the leg off a dead woman and ran off with it. One character is killed then hung on a hook and paraded. Another is also gruesomely displayed after their death. Several characters are dragged through processions to "prove a point," another character is hung from two large poles and left to basically die in the sun. Multiple accounts of vomiting/poison throughout, and a general unpleasantness at the lack of regard for human life.
Non-spoilery review:
This book makes you think. A lot. It makes you question things, and wonder if maybe Snow is right (he's not), but it's written in such a way that he's not a villain. Donald Sutherland in an interview made a great point in saying that Snow isn't a villain, he's just a ruthless man doing what he thinks is right to keep his home and country in one piece.
"He does it so well. And he doesn't think he's a bad person. He thinks it's the only way society can survive. And whether you think he's right or wrong, he doesn't think he's bad. He likes himself."
This should be the mantra for this book. Snow is a conflicting, flawed human. In our society, he's evil, a sociopath or a psychopath. He's a murderer and a killer. He's a bad guy. In his world, he's one of the masses. He simply lives as he's been raised to, with a mentality that has been ingrained in him since the war between the Districts and the Capitol. He's simply more ruthless then most and has the guts to make what he considers the "hard decisions."
Regardless of the other characters in this, they're all props to his story--which fits well with the Snow we know from The Hunger Games. Everyone is second stage to Snow and his life. This is his evolution from being a child to a man, to becoming the Snow we know and love/hate.
I definitely don't think this book is for everyone. I'm sitting here with my mom breathing down my neck because she can't wait to read it, and I don't think she'll like it at all, and she's a diehard THG trilogy fan. Why? Because not everyone likes to read depressing books. There's no redemption in this. There's no saving someone from themselves. This is the fall, stumble, plummet into being a not great person and embracing it fully.
So take that as you will. Full spoilers below about everything.
P.s. This is a standalone.
SPOILERS BELOW
Okay, so, I was worried about this book when I read the first chapter sample and it got announced that Snow would be training the District 12 girl. I thought, oh crap, it's gonna be a cliche YA. It's gonna have a stupid romance that undercuts the whole plot and makes him a sap.
And yeah, it did that, and up until the last 50 pages I was teetering on a 3-3.5 stars. And then oh boy, the end.
Lucy Grey was a sweet girl, but she felt off since the beginning. I still can't fully put my finger on it, but her and Snow's relationship felt so <i>wrong</i> the entirety of the book. The red flags went up repeatedly every time he made comments about how she was his, and even so far as to say she was his property, and that's all kinds of wrong. And even though their romance was cute and fluffy, it felt bad, tainted. You knew something was going to happen. It always does in these villain backstories. Usually the whole reason the villain is bad is because the love interest gets brutally killed and then they're like whelp, guess I'll just be evil.
Not in this book.
Snow constantly struggles with morality and right and wrong throughout this. Should he turn in his friend to the Capitol because they're colluding with rebels and could tear down the (flawed) infrastructure? Or should he turn a blind eye and let his friend do his own thing? Is the Hunger Games wrong or good? Is it wrong to view the District people as second class humans? And so on.
This book broaches the topic of racism in very broad terms with the whole District/Capitol thing.
You've always known there was a divide between them, but in this, you really see how much the Capitol looks down on the Districts, and you can easily see how that morphs into such a hatred and distaste by the time Katniss first enters the Hunger Games.
But I digress. Snow struggles with morality, but he's flawed and very, very imperfect. He rationalizes every death he takes as self-defense or some other reason when really he's just murdered someone because it's inconvenient for him. He kills (or at least removes her from the picture; it's ambiguous) Lucy Grey in the end because she's a loose end and too free. He does it. Not someone else, not some freak accident. He chooses to do it and, by the time it happens, you already know what direction he's headed in so it's not quite another nail in the coffin. It fully feels like him tying up loose ends so he can go do whatever he wants.
All the nods to THG characters and names was cool. You also had a lot of The Great Gatsby vibes in the Old Money versus New Money mentality that a lot of the Capitol had with District people who gained a fortune and bought their way into the Capitol life. They're looked down upon by the old families and viewed as trash.
You saw a lot of the evolution in the Hunger Games, and you can see how it begins to change and grow into what Katniss and Peeta suffered through. You see how it begins to change from a simple punishment to a sport and a holiday, with the growing encouragement that it should be a normal and good thing.
You also see a side of the Capitol you most definitely did not see in the trilogy--suffering. A lot of the book shows Snow struggling with having been a small child living through the Dark Days and the war. He was 8 when the Capitol won, and even then it was hard. You learn about the hell the Capitol lived through as they were besieged by the Districts' army and forced to ration, starvation, and cannibalism. It's a hard picture, and it's so blatantly told. Collins didn't hold back any punches in this. I never felt like what was done was for shock and awe for the reader, but it was definitely that for the story, and it made sense. Regardless of the Capitol not being at war with the Districts anymore, the tensions were still so high that it makes sense for the Capitol to overreact in their retaliation of events. So when one mentor gets killed by her tribute, they shoot the tribute and parade her body around on a hook at the mentor's funeral. It's disgusting, debasing, and shows how much the Capitol views the Districts as nothing more than rodents or livestock.
Anyway, I'll stop talking. Go read it yourself. It's a hard read, a heavy read, but it was very, very enjoyable.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 24, 2020
Amazon delivered my copy early, so I'm going to do a spoiler free review and then a spoilery one. Pardon if this winds up sounding like an English paper. I have thought so much on the morals and questions in this book that I feel like I should have read this in school.
Note: I'm writing this review with the express belief that you, reader, have at least read the book description. Otherwise why are you reading this review?
I want to start this off by saying two things. One, this is not a hero story. Snow is never once, in my opinion, shown to be a hero in this in what we modern folks would call a hero. He's no Luke Skywalker or redeemed villain. This isn't some sob backstory to explain "why the bad guy is bad." This is yet another set of layers to the onion that is Snow.
Second, this book is dark. It's been a minute since I read the original trilogy, but I swear it wasn't quite as graphic as this book was. Cannibalism is mentioned, and it's shown/talked about that someone sawed the leg off a dead woman and ran off with it. One character is killed then hung on a hook and paraded. Another is also gruesomely displayed after their death. Several characters are dragged through processions to "prove a point," another character is hung from two large poles and left to basically die in the sun. Multiple accounts of vomiting/poison throughout, and a general unpleasantness at the lack of regard for human life.
Non-spoilery review:
This book makes you think. A lot. It makes you question things, and wonder if maybe Snow is right (he's not), but it's written in such a way that he's not a villain. Donald Sutherland in an interview made a great point in saying that Snow isn't a villain, he's just a ruthless man doing what he thinks is right to keep his home and country in one piece.
"He does it so well. And he doesn't think he's a bad person. He thinks it's the only way society can survive. And whether you think he's right or wrong, he doesn't think he's bad. He likes himself."
This should be the mantra for this book. Snow is a conflicting, flawed human. In our society, he's evil, a sociopath or a psychopath. He's a murderer and a killer. He's a bad guy. In his world, he's one of the masses. He simply lives as he's been raised to, with a mentality that has been ingrained in him since the war between the Districts and the Capitol. He's simply more ruthless then most and has the guts to make what he considers the "hard decisions."
Regardless of the other characters in this, they're all props to his story--which fits well with the Snow we know from The Hunger Games. Everyone is second stage to Snow and his life. This is his evolution from being a child to a man, to becoming the Snow we know and love/hate.
I definitely don't think this book is for everyone. I'm sitting here with my mom breathing down my neck because she can't wait to read it, and I don't think she'll like it at all, and she's a diehard THG trilogy fan. Why? Because not everyone likes to read depressing books. There's no redemption in this. There's no saving someone from themselves. This is the fall, stumble, plummet into being a not great person and embracing it fully.
So take that as you will. Full spoilers below about everything.
P.s. This is a standalone.
SPOILERS BELOW
Okay, so, I was worried about this book when I read the first chapter sample and it got announced that Snow would be training the District 12 girl. I thought, oh crap, it's gonna be a cliche YA. It's gonna have a stupid romance that undercuts the whole plot and makes him a sap.
And yeah, it did that, and up until the last 50 pages I was teetering on a 3-3.5 stars. And then oh boy, the end.
Lucy Grey was a sweet girl, but she felt off since the beginning. I still can't fully put my finger on it, but her and Snow's relationship felt so <i>wrong</i> the entirety of the book. The red flags went up repeatedly every time he made comments about how she was his, and even so far as to say she was his property, and that's all kinds of wrong. And even though their romance was cute and fluffy, it felt bad, tainted. You knew something was going to happen. It always does in these villain backstories. Usually the whole reason the villain is bad is because the love interest gets brutally killed and then they're like whelp, guess I'll just be evil.
Not in this book.
Snow constantly struggles with morality and right and wrong throughout this. Should he turn in his friend to the Capitol because they're colluding with rebels and could tear down the (flawed) infrastructure? Or should he turn a blind eye and let his friend do his own thing? Is the Hunger Games wrong or good? Is it wrong to view the District people as second class humans? And so on.
This book broaches the topic of racism in very broad terms with the whole District/Capitol thing.
You've always known there was a divide between them, but in this, you really see how much the Capitol looks down on the Districts, and you can easily see how that morphs into such a hatred and distaste by the time Katniss first enters the Hunger Games.
But I digress. Snow struggles with morality, but he's flawed and very, very imperfect. He rationalizes every death he takes as self-defense or some other reason when really he's just murdered someone because it's inconvenient for him. He kills (or at least removes her from the picture; it's ambiguous) Lucy Grey in the end because she's a loose end and too free. He does it. Not someone else, not some freak accident. He chooses to do it and, by the time it happens, you already know what direction he's headed in so it's not quite another nail in the coffin. It fully feels like him tying up loose ends so he can go do whatever he wants.
All the nods to THG characters and names was cool. You also had a lot of The Great Gatsby vibes in the Old Money versus New Money mentality that a lot of the Capitol had with District people who gained a fortune and bought their way into the Capitol life. They're looked down upon by the old families and viewed as trash.
You saw a lot of the evolution in the Hunger Games, and you can see how it begins to change and grow into what Katniss and Peeta suffered through. You see how it begins to change from a simple punishment to a sport and a holiday, with the growing encouragement that it should be a normal and good thing.
You also see a side of the Capitol you most definitely did not see in the trilogy--suffering. A lot of the book shows Snow struggling with having been a small child living through the Dark Days and the war. He was 8 when the Capitol won, and even then it was hard. You learn about the hell the Capitol lived through as they were besieged by the Districts' army and forced to ration, starvation, and cannibalism. It's a hard picture, and it's so blatantly told. Collins didn't hold back any punches in this. I never felt like what was done was for shock and awe for the reader, but it was definitely that for the story, and it made sense. Regardless of the Capitol not being at war with the Districts anymore, the tensions were still so high that it makes sense for the Capitol to overreact in their retaliation of events. So when one mentor gets killed by her tribute, they shoot the tribute and parade her body around on a hook at the mentor's funeral. It's disgusting, debasing, and shows how much the Capitol views the Districts as nothing more than rodents or livestock.
Anyway, I'll stop talking. Go read it yourself. It's a hard read, a heavy read, but it was very, very enjoyable.

As most readers already know, this prequel explores Coriolanus's life when he was a teenager. The opening chapters reveal that he was also chosen to be a mentor for Lucy Gray who was from the despised district 12.
But what she lacks in fighting skills she makes up for being a charismatic performer. Lucy Gray learned how to work a situation to her advantage.
In the beginning the tributes did not enjoy Capitol luxuries but were kept in cages and barely fed. It’s a stark contrast to the future hunger games when tributes were met with an extravagant welcome and dined on rich foods.
The problem was that watching too much brutality turned the Capitol away from the Games. Snow's addition to the Hunger Games of costumes, interviews, and the underdog tributes made the propaganda go down easy. This should be a cautionary tale.
A lot of readers are not getting the point the author is trying to make. In the opening of this book there's a quote by Hobbes:
“Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.” — Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
Coriolanus's first "lesson" to be molded into the future oppressor was during the Hunger Games; when he was forced to go in the arena to get out Sejanus, one of the mentors, who was not supposed to be in there. While at the hospital getting stitches, the head gamekeeper, Dr. Gaul, asked if Coriolanus understood what he was supposed to learn.
“Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”
“I think I wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if you hadn’t stuck me in that arena!” he retorted.
“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 what you learned tonight.”
A very similar thought process was also stated by the Joker in The Dark Night:
“To them, you’re just a freak, like me! They need you right now, but when they don’t, they’ll cast you out, like a leper! You see, their morals, their code, it’s a bad joke. Dropped at the first sign of trouble. They’re only as good as the world allows them to be. I’ll show you. When the chips are down, these… these civilized people, they’ll eat each other. See, I’m not a monster. I’m just ahead of the curve.”
Both the Joker and Dr. Gaul has distorted thinking. It's one thing to make a choice freely and it's quite another thing to be forced into one.
Human nature is such that coercive enforcement of rules is indispensable to protect the rights of all but there is a fine line between government rule and government oppression.
Later, as Coriolanus's feelings toward Lucy Gray grew, he helped her to survive the games only to get caught and was sent to train with the peacekeepers in her district. Sejanus joined him there soon after.
Sejanus was never one who was comfortable with the Capital and its way of life. He got a plan to help the districts by providing the rebels with guns for their flight up north, out of Panem.
Coriolanus found out about Sejanus’ plot. Mayfair threatens to tell her father [the Mayor] everything, which would implicate Coriolanus and Lucy Gray despite them being only bystanders; he shot her.
Sejanus is charged with treason and hanged. And Lucy Gray Baird is the main suspect in Billy Taupe [her ex rebel boyfriend] and Mayfair’s deaths, as he left her for the mayor’s daughter.
In desperation, Lucy Gray decides to join the rebels up north and Coriolanus decides to go with her, thinking there's nothing left of his life once the murder weapons were found.
But as they prepare to flee district 12, Snow gets paranoid that Lucy Gray is betraying him. When they stop at a house near district 12’s lake, he discovers the rebels’ store of the weapons. When Lucy Gray takes a long time to cut up some katniss plants, he convinces himself that she has abandoned him and went to turn him in.
"What if they interrogated or even tortured her? The story would come out. She hadn't killed anyone. He had. His word against hers".
But even though Snow searches for her, Lucy Gray was nowhere to be found.
The three killings that Snow did throughout the book contributed to his downward spiral and PTSD. Coriolanus clubbed to death a tribute, Bobbin, in the Hunger Games arena. He also shoots the mayor's daughter and also turns in his best friend, Sejanus, for treason, resulting in his execution.
Lucy Gray was the last straw for his sanity. Back at the Capital the reader sees Snow's change to "the dark side".
"Sometimes he would remember a moment of sweetness and almost wish things had ended differently. But it would never have worked out between them, even if he’d stayed. They were simply too different. And he didn’t like love, the way it had made him feel stupid and vulnerable. If he ever married, he’d choose someone incapable of swaying his heart. Someone he hated, even, so they could never manipulate him the way Lucy Gray had. Never make him feel jealous. Or weak. Livia Cardew would be perfect. He imagined the two of them, the president and his first lady, presiding over the Hunger Games a few years from now. He’d continue the Games, of course, when he ruled Panem. People would call him a tyrant, ironfisted and cruel. But at least he would ensure survival for survival’s sake, giving them a chance to evolve. What else could humanity hope for? Really, it should thank him."
This happened to Ted Bundy as I believe one of the main reasons he became a serial killer was because his first love dumped him. If you were to get all his victims lined up together you would think they were all sisters and you will notice that they all look like his first girlfriend.
Rejection is a powerful force in a person's life if they are not stable. Dr. Gaul planted the seeds for that rejection to take root and grow.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 18, 2023

Top reviews from other countries

The world-building of this novel is captivating. It is set 64 years before the events of The Hunger Games and only 10 years after the war. Due to this, we see Capitol in a very different light. The city is still war-torn and rife with poverty. The Hunger Games exists, but is a primal shade of what it would later become. Everyone bares scars of what happened in the conflict and would rather forget what happened. I personally found it interesting to see Panem in such a state, especially as Snow and his class gradually began to shape The Hunger Games into something closer to what fans will recognise.
Yet, I did sometimes think that the novel was too heavy-handed with its call-backs. While some of the minor changes, such as the introduction of sponsors and betting to the Hunger Games, were nice little nods, other things were less subtle. This was particularly obvious in the final section of the story, in which Coriolanus witnesses the origin of The Hanging Tree song and gains an irrational hatred of Mockingjays. Yeah, that is certainly on the nose.
In terms of pacing, I do think that this book has the potential to divide fans. Due to its focus on Coriolanus, it is no where near as fast-paced as the other books. After all, Coryo is a stage removed from proceedings. He is not in the arena fighting - he is watching from the safety of the mentors' box. What this did give the time for was more of a character study. We followed Coriolanus in his daily life within the Capitol as he attended school and mentored Lucy Gray. This allowed readers to see Panem from the other side - a world that is far different from the empoverished life of Katniss Everdeen.
Yet, at times, the novel could be incredibly slow. While I was utterly captivated by the first two-thirds of the novel, the section after the climax of the 10th Hunger Games did start to lose me a little. Coriolanus's time in District 12 was surprisingly uneventful for the most part. While things did pick up again over the last 40 pages, for the most it seemed to be a bit of a come down after the excitement of the Games.
In terms of character, the novel was also perhaps a little varied. As a character study of Coriolanus Snow, it was spectacular. Coryo is a fantastically complex character. His empoverished upbringing and desire to protect his family could have made him incredibly sympathetic, but this was offset by his ambition and underlying nationalism. Even at his most vulnerable, there was always a sense that Coryo would do anything to come out on top, which prevented him from ever being truly likeable. As a villain origin story, I would say that this was incredibly effective. You could certainly understand Coriolanus, but you could never like him.
Yet, while there was a large supporting cast, most of these faded into the background. This was, in part, because Coryo was so self-serving that he never really paid much attention to him. The two that really shone were Lucy Gray and Sejanus. Lucy Gray made for a compelling love-interest who was refreshingly different from Katniss. While her motivations were occasionally a little hard to grasp, she was very lovable and served as a representation of how different Coriolanus's life could be.
Sejanus was also a fantastic character as he represented new money - a character unable to fit in with the Districts or the Capitol. Although his naivety grew more and more frustrating as the novel progressed, the situation he was in was terribly sad and held a mirror up to Coryo. Here was a person who had a similar education to Coriolanus, but his upbringing allowed him to see the world in a very different light.
All in all, I actually really enjoyed reading this novel. While I can see why some fans were disappointed, I found it to be a wonderful character study that added a lot of depth to the series's villain. It's definitely one that I wold recommend.

Good story perhaps aimed at a slightly older readership and well worth a look.

What this book is not: Fully immersive into the different districts, a full accounting of President Snow's rise to power.
Whilst I love The Hunger Games, and a fan of YA/NA dystopia, I was a bit disappointed in BoSaS. Told completely from Coriolanus Snow's point of view, it centres around the period shortly after the great war - when both he and the Hunger Games were in the process of change and development.
There was a noticeable attempt to conjoin this prequel to its subsequent time-delayed sequels, with often repeat callbacks to songs, names and references which are so blunt it feels like they have just been jammed in to 'lay the foundations' for The Hunger Games trilogy. It felt clumsy, grating, and quite superficial - with very little character development or depth - in fact, the most action happens in the last 20 or so pages, and feels entirely rushed at the end - and abruptly breaks off - making me wonder if Collins is planning another prequel-sequel - which would leave Coriolanus's teenage years behind and examine his development of the 30s-60's. It provides no content or understanding of the next three books in the series, which was a major disappointment. I had read expecting there to be some reference perhaps towards the end. This is a standalone book.
This is still an excellent book for understanding the structure of The Hunger Games in it's early development, but ironically, it lacks the charm and depth of any of the other three books in the series.

However, I could not have been more wrong. This story is riveting- I read the whole thing in 4 hours and just could not put it down.
So many Easter Eggs for HG fans, origins and explanations.
I’m truly hoping there will be more to this one story, I found it more engaging than the original trilogy.

I think this is the first review....
Well its amazing, buy it. Its like it is glued to your hands once you buy it!
Well done Mrs Collins.
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