After high anticipations, Suzanne Collins’ prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, had its movie adaptation released onto silver screens across the world on November 17 of 2023. Since then, reviews of its performance have remained mixed, but Lionsgate Entertainment remains true to its adaptations of the books. That being said, as a story based much on characters’ thoughts, there were some things the movie simply couldn’t portray. With that in mind, what exactly is the book about?
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes stands at 528 pages, telling the story of the infamous Coriolanus Snow before he became the tyrannical president of Panem during the 10th annual Hunger Games, in which he became a mentor to save his fading family lineage. To his dismay, he is assigned to Lucy Gray Baird of District 12 and laughed upon by fellow mentors. But he quickly finds this to be an opportunity and joins hands with Lucy Gray to unite their abilities into showmanship and appeasement of the public.
Collins succeeds in both humanizing and confirming Snow’s negative nature through his point of view. From the start, though he straddles on the line of good and evil, young Snow is driven by the principle that if a cause is considered just enough, that any perusal of it is therefore justified regardless of what that perusal may be. Though he began to foster a fondness for Lucy Gray throughout the Games, it is seen through his thoughts and actions that this principle does not diminish; rather, it warps to something far more self-serving and twisted.
In the process of climbing to the top, he sinks his claws into Panem and those around him, growing into the monster that will later terrorize the Districts for decades to come. Through Snow’s story, rather than providing an allegory, Collins follows the philosophy surrounding the impact of the choices we make, especially ones considered self-serving and morally flawed.
Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is not a love story, nor does it have a hero that comes out on top in the end. It is the story of how the tyrannical President Snow, antagonist of the Hunger Games trilogy, became the evil he was, at the expense of those around him. If you are looking for a unique book driven by a calculating man as he loses his moralities to his hunger for power, this four out of five shields story is for you!