The Ballad of Songbirds and snakes - A book review by Kathe

This is my second review, this time of a book. It seems that power continues as the main issue here, hope you enjoy this post but please don’t sell your soul to achieve power, fortune, and glory!

Just let me tell you guys, Suzanne did it again, I read all the books of Hunger Games with Katniss and all the action, desperation, love, powerlessness, you can sense them hitting hard on this new Book, I thought I would read it in a month but it was so good I read it in 3 days, let’s get right to it.

  

My personal score: 10

Fanart by @ahikuboruchi source

 

The Ballad of Songbirds and snakes is the story about a teenager, Coriolanus Snow, being a mentor to a Tribute of District 12 for the 10th Hunger Games, with Lucy Gray Baird, the tribute. Another main character is Sejanus Plinth a new rich guy from District 2, who his father bought a place in Capitol and the Academy, these characters are involved in the heavy-duty hot mess that is Panem, 10 years after the Dark Days (when the Districts join forces against the Capitol), in this version of the Games, the Head Gamemaker Volumnia Gaul, a true mistress of evil, involves students of the fancy Academy to be Mentors of the Tributes, hoping that with their ideas and presence, transform the Games into a Big Hit, since people of the Capitol are getting extremely tired of it.

 

For the first time in this Universe, while reading this novel I’ve felt the Hunger of the name, Coriolanus Snow, is an orphan of a former rich family, he is usually working hard to maintain appearances, so this is something truly relatable, not because I have been famished before, but because food is really important on my day, here we see this younger Snow, extremely worried about it, although he manages to eat, it is not enough to satisfy him, he is usually on “low batterie” if he misses his Lunch or Dinner, he could easily faint.

Snow has an undeniable Hunger for Power, Fame, and glory, therefore he is the biggest nerd, mostly because if he doesn’t get the Scholarship or whatever the Prize of these Games is, he won’t be able to go to college and he is deeply concerned about it, therefore, anytime there is hard homework or an essay nobody wants to do, he doesn’t sleep working on it, in this book we are able to see his way of thinking and that he is a fighter for survival like Katniss but his main focus is the pride, Snow is a huge believer of the words of his Grandma’am (which sound much better in Spanish - Abuelatriz), he is the future president of Panem, he listens to the Anthem every day and he is sure that control and commitment will overcome chaos.

The birth of a Snake

 

Definitely, the state of Panem on these days is unreal, this society rewards hard work, yes, but usually, the twisted side, mean, cruel and deadly, which Snow quickly becomes great at, here we see his rise as a Sociopath, I was pretty shocked about his thoughts of Lucy Gray as his property, he went like - “Everybody knows that she is mine” as if she was not a person but a thing to be owned, and later when she was not useful, without a shadow of remorse he shoots at her, I think that went dark.

This is also the book of Lucy Gray and the ballads, Lucy is an amazing singer and writer of the Covey, a traveling music band that got trapped in District 12 when the war happened, she is the author of the songs used by Katniss in the revolution, and some of them were “originally” used as love songs to the one and only Coriolanus Snow, so that is ironic and lovely at the same time.

In the mind of Snow, we see the fight of being at first an innocent teenager with a great future ahead, and how the games and tricks of Capitol push him towards the birth of the Snake, sure he makes a bunch of devious decisions, but as said before, a person is for me, a combination of personality and all the situations that happen to him or her.

I think this book is quite a ride, totally recommended, great news for everyone is that Lionsgate is working on the script to make a movie from this book, I couldn’t be happier. Source.

💓💓💓

Tropes:

Hunger games

Starvation

Orphan children

Xenophobia

Mutes

Best friends conflict

Mind games

Ballads 

First Love

Struggle of appearances

Phrases: 

“A Snow lands on top”

"The show's not over until the Mockingjay sings."