A Review of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Hello!

One of the books I was planning on reading this summer was A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins. Well, even though I was planning on reading it a little bit later, a spontaneous shopping trip foiled that plan. I got the book and read it, hardly putting it down. Today I’m going to be doing a review of it.

WARNING: Spoilers lie ahead 

One of the things I didn’t even think about when reading the original books was how the games evolved. At first, I was very surprised at how the tributes were treated. But the fact that the tributes were put into an old zoo and not fed made sense. The Capitol’s goal was to get people to watch The Hunger Games, and at first, no one did. It was really interesting to see how a lot of people didn’t think The Hunger Games were entertainment, but it eventually evolved to be entertainment.

I loved all of the songs and music in this book, especially the part where we find out the origins of The Hanging Tree. I’m really interested to see how the movie adapts all of the songs.

It wasn’t as suspenseful as the original books, but very thought provoking, which I liked. It explored lots of things including how humans become violent, control, chaos, power… This book definitely made me think.

I absolutely loved the title of this book. One of my pet peeves is a book where the title doesn’t make much sense, or the title word is only mentioned once or twice. This book though? Every. Single. Word. Had. A. Purpose.

(“The”, “of”, and “and” are just filling words to make the title make sense)

Ballad: Lucy Gray sings a ballad or two, and is named after a ballad along with the other Covey.

Songbirds: The actual word “songbird” was only used a few times, but I think this represents both Lucy Gray and the mockingjays/jabberjays. I think “songbird” was used so the title would have a ring to it. (just imagine: The Ballad of Mockingjays and Snakes. Doesn’t have the same “ring” to it)

Snakes: This one was debated on who it could be, but I decided that since the words are plural, they could represent a few people. The first thought of is Dr. Gauls (very) creepy snakes. Then there’s Lucy Grays love of snakes. And last but not least, I think Snow himself could be a snake too.

Characters:

Coriolanus Snow was a very interesting character. Since we already knew him from the original books, it was very interesting to see how he changed to become the villain he is.

Lucy Gray was mysterious, and I really enjoyed a lot of the songs she sang. Dr. Gaul was a very creepy villain, although a lot of her conversations with Coriolanus and the other students made me think a lot. Sejanus was interesting, but I got a little annoyed with him for always getting Coriolanus into trouble. I can understand where he’s coming from, but yeah, I wasn’t a huge fan of him.

The ending:

To be honest, the ending felt a little anticlimactic. Some of my friends and family agreed. They said it would have been much more suspenseful (and given Snow lots of internal conflict) if Snow had forced himself to kill Lucy Gray because she was the only witness to the murders.

General Thoughts (no more spoilers)

I really liked The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. It wasn’t as suspenseful as the original books, but made me think very hard. It provided backstory for why President Snow became the villain he is, along with the origins of many other things including The Hanging Tree. Villain backstories sometimes flop, but this one surely did not!

What do you think? What were some of your favorite (and not so favorite) parts of this book? Until next time!

-Hannah