The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: A Hunger Games Novel
4.5 | 105,371 ratings
Price: 22.78
Last update: 02-02-2026
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- HollyA fantastic villain origin storyI adored the Hunger Games series. Dystopian YA is not a normal genre for me, but this series is awesome and this prequel? A fantastic villain origin story.
Coriolanus Snow is an ambitious 18-year-old student whose wealthy family barely survived the war. He is all about image and pretense, which often vie against his normal, human feelings. His parents are dead and he lives in a rundown apartment with his grandmother and cousin Tigris.
But, the 10th Hunger Games is to be the first one with mentors and Coriolanus has been chosen to mentor the female tribute from District 12. While at first humiliated at not being given a more highly rated district, he quickly realizes that Lucy Gray is someone who could win and it's up to him to figure out how to help her do that. Along the way, Coriolanus learns about love and the dangers it can bring.
As he works his way through the Games, he also discovers who wields the power in the Capitol, who controls the games and what he needs to do to rise up above the masses.
The student mentors also have a say in how the games are run, and in a somewhat twisted sort of way, their professor gives assignments and in Coriolanus' essays, we see how future Games come about and evolve. As the mentors talk about the games and what is happening, we also see how they are not all unfeeling or unkind. They view their tributes as people and they can see how unfair the Games really are. At the same time we see that those in the Capitol are only concerned about their well being and that their losses are because of the rebels.
The Hunger Games series is vibrant and colorful in its imagery. This book, however, was almost more black and gray in its imagery, what with the rubble of the arena and the Capitol still trying to rebuild from the war. That made the contrast of Lucy Gray's colorful skirt and the snakes all the more striking.
As with the rest of the series, we see the government oppression, we see the results of war and rebellion. We see society broken, but fighting and we see that even with survival, life isn't grand and colorful. But we also see that the human spirit is strong.
No one likes who President Snow becomes and I think writing about his story so that he gains the reader's sympathy is brilliant. The story isn't fast-paced, but it drew me in and kept me enthralled. - NikaanshAstonishing BookIn the book, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” by Suzanne Collins, a young Coriolanus Snow and his family were struggling with poverty, and with it, his chance to enter the university. He is then appointed as the mentor of the weakest competitor in the Hunger Games, the district 12 girl, whose name was Lucy Gray Baird. Just when he thought there was no chance he was winning the games and the Plinth prize, she proved her worth to him with a rebellious move, killing the District 12 mayor’s daughter with a snake during reaping day. The book is great, with lots of suspense and plot twists. The question of whether Coriolanus Snow would be victorious or would he be doomed to a future of poverty and possibly be sent to the districts. This book kept me on edge, and I would recommend it to anyone.
- Word NerdNot as good as Hunger Games but a good bookThe book was not great, nor very exciting or realistic. But if you are a Hunger Games fan, you really do have to read it. Suzanne Collins is a good writer, so I did find myself compelled by her words and found it often hard to put the book down. That said, there were a few things that felt forced in the storyline, and the timeline felt a little off. For example, the games were going on for 10 years already, and they were only just getting around to working out the bugs. Also, by the time Katniss came along, the games had been in effect for 75 years. That would make Snow something like 85 years old. He wasn't described as that old in the Hunger Games series. And in this book, Panem did not have the advanced technology they had 60 years later. However, this seems wrong since Panem is already far into "our" future. So shouldn't they already have the holograms and high tech gadgets?
Things I liked:
It was interesting to see the Hunger Games from the earlier days when tributes were treated more like animals than celebrities, and the arena was an actual arena, like in a bull fight.
The idea that there were vagabonds throughout Panem, who weren't part of any district.
The idea that in the old days, not all the tributes made it to the games. (Though I think they'd have worked that out in 10 years.)
I loved Lucy Gray Baird.
I liked the appearance of Tigris.
Snow's transformation from a reasonable human being to an obsessive deviant.
What I did not like:
While I did like the district 12 tribute (Lucy), she wasn't very realistic. She was too cheerful for someone who wasn't even from the districts and got thrown into their bizarre death ritual.
The misconception that Snow was poor and hungry. In the first few pages, they try to depict Snow as someone who hadn't eaten in days, someone who rarely has anything but cabbage soup. Then suddenly his cousin shows up with potatoes and veggies and they ate pretty well. From then on, Snow ate ALL THE TIME. He was always eating. The tributes were also eating all the time. It seemed like no one ever went hungry, even though the narration implied that everyone was poor and starving.
The never-ending page after page of singing. This is the worst thing to put in a book. You can't read a song! I don't know the music and I don't feel like making up a tune to go with pages worth of someone else's lyrics. How annoying! This was so obviously Suzanne Collins setting the book up to be a movie. Annoying. Oh and how about some of the songs that just happened to be the ones Katniss sang later. Really? This is a play on OUR future. No one has a David Bowie song stashed somewhere?
Despite my dislikes, I am glad I read it and I think if you are a fan, you should definitely read. Don't expect great Hunger Games characters or even much of a storyline. Think of it as a bit of supplemental info on a great trilogy. - Qui CrevaLong, but worth the effortI enjoyed this backstory far more than I thought I would. Some 65 years before Katniss Everdeen wound up in the Hunger Games, we are introduced to her nemesis, Coriolanus Snow. Yet the adolescent Snow is not a villain. He is basically a decent young man struggling with poverty. His aristocratic family has fallen upon hard times, the aftereffect of the war that devastated Panem and gave rise to the punitive Hunger Games. Coriolanus is the only member of the clan who has a chance to bring the Snows back to their former prestige. Unfortunately, to achieve that goal he feels that he must make some morally ambiguous choices. Each of these chips away at his human decency. A boy with the potential for true greatness starts down the path to infamy.
This book is a great character study for those willing to work through its 500+ pages.