The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes

It’s out now. The prequel to the Hunger Games. No one was really asking for more Hunger Games, but we got more.

My family only got the book a week and a half ago, but it’s already had its success in my family. Due to my long days of work, I’ve only made it, like, a fifth of the way through the book, though I plan on picking up the slack soon. My dad read it, and he said it had an “interesting” ending that tied into the original trilogy. Makes me curious to see how it ends.

Anyone else reading the book?

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Nope. I don’t particularly care about Hunger Games.

I keep seeing this title and thinking it’s some sort of “Song of Ice and Fire” ripoff, just because of how the name is structured.

I don’t really feel any reason to read the book, just a vague interest in whether it falls into all the usual traps of needless prequels.

That’s how it feels to me.

I read the plot synopsis, and while exploring the pre-Hunger Games world does sound interesting, Collins instead decided to attempt to shoehorn in some retroactive continuity that makes the Snow/Katniss conflict a lot less natural.

[spoiler] Haven’t read the book myself, but I heard it’s about a younger Snow mentoring a female tribute from District 12. The parallels are obvious, and I can’t help but feel this cheapens the conflict between Snow and Katniss in the original books. Instead of one man’s tyranny leading him into conflict with an unlikely hero, it now feels like Snow was “always destined” to be in conflict with Katniss because he once mentored a girl of her exact circumstance. One of the hooks of the original book was that we were following an unlikely underdog, a girl from a poor town who was in her circumstance completely on accident. Her remarkably un-special nature is what made her transformation into the Mockingjay so compelling; anyone could have been the hero.

But now, with this book, we’re following another girl from District 12 and seeing her interactions with Snow. Again, I haven’t read it, it might be good, but it still feels unnecessary and a bit cheap for the sake of trying to somehow tie Snow’s history into Katniss. [/spoiler]

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I might give it a read, I need something to do.

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I started reading it last week

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poor you

neat. imma go back to reading my g1 childrens chapter books tho

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I’m about half-way through now.

I think it’s pretty good so far.

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The last third of it starts to get really good.

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