The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
2020
- snow
- panem
- hunger games
- young adult fiction, science fiction, general
- young adult fiction, action & adventure, survival stories
- young adult fiction, dystopian
- the ballad of songbirds and snakes
- science fiction
- serie:the_hunger_games
- juegos del hambre
The story
Ambition will fuel him. Competition will drive him. But power has its price. It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute . . . and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.
What it’s like
Cold, pale mornings in the Capitol, all white marble, chandeliers and fussy pastel finery, with the rot of a faded family showing through the gilt, then the grey, hungry look of District 12's poorest streets. The prose is clipped, watchful and close in third person, cataloguing small social slights, expensive clothes and the calculated tilt of a smile, so the reader feels every rule being weighed. The pacing is slow and tense through the Capitol's manicured politics, then tightens into a sweat-and-dirt arena stretch where violence is frequent and brutal. Deaths are described plainly and without sentiment, though never lingered on for shock. The emotional register is cold, cynical and quietly sad, a slow study of a proud young man's compromises and the faint stirrings of feeling that threaten them. Best read on a long train journey or late at night when you want immersive dystopian dread and a slow-burning moral unravelling. It suits readers who loved the original trilogy and want its world more than its heroine: intense, bleak and far from gentle.
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