Book Review: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

What are lies but attempts to conceal some sort of weakness?

My aim was to read this before the film came out in November. And I’m glad I did, there is a lot to unpack here, after all this book turns a notorious tyrant and antagonist from a multi-million-pound franchise into a protagonist. That’s quite a feat to pull off. It is a credit to Suzanne Collins's writing that you end up routing for Coriolanus Snow to win all, but it is bittersweet and comes at a heavy price.

 Even after 10 years, the horror of civil war is still fresh in the minds of the citizens of Panem. The Hunger Games are still very much in their infancy, still held in the same area as they had since its inception. But this time they are different, this time Panem’s best and brightest students of the Academy will be mentors to this year's fresh tributes selected for slaughter. And who is given the District 12 female? None other than our own Coriolanus Snow. I must say, he has certainly met his match in his tribute, Lucy Grey Baird. She beguiles him, enchants him and ultimately, throws him off his game. This is not the Snow we recognise from the Hunger Games, years into the future.

Was he always deeply ambitious and conniving? Yes and no. Ambitious certainly, but conniving? I think that grows – he is certainly clever and can anticipate the next move and countermoves. We know this from the Hunger Games but in this book. He is only 17-18 years old and has a lot to learn. In this book, he is not rich or powerful. No, here he is living in the ruins of his penthouse apartment, lamenting the once-powerful House of Snow. Poverty and ruin threaten, the only protection? The name of ‘Snow’ because “snow lands on top”. Always. I suppose what helps is the ominous presence of Dr Gaul who essentially believes that mankind is inherently evil. And that’s putting it lightly. You can tell, someone has read their Niccolò Machiavelli and possibly Hobbes and Rousseau.

This book in and of itself is a great topic for philosophical debate. Is man inherently evil? Or is our moral compass forged in the crucible of our environment? Snow is in a district-hating, post-war environment. The scars of war are not only psychological for him, but there are shrapnel scars on his home too. Snow is led down a path of his own destruction, the people within his life are there by circumstance – Dr Gaul, for example, Head Gamemaker needles and manipulates all the students and, indeed Coriolanus, into an ideology that he does not fully question - with disastrous results. Indeed, Coriolanus destroys, arguably, one of the only good things he has – Lucy Grey Baird. Even in the darkest of times, she was the light. I believe Coriolanus Snow says at one point (in the other books mind you) “It is the things we love most, that destroy us”. Depending on your standpoint, I believe it destroys him in more ways than one.

I can’t wait to see the film.