The ballad of songbirds and snakes by Suzanne Collins
Hello Books Lovers,
How are you? Let’s say that these days have been full of interesting releases and impossible to read all of them, but I have tried my best to bring you the reviews of the most anticipated, and today I am talking about the new addition, more than 10 years after the release of the original trilogy, at the Hunger Games. I’m talking about Ballad of songbirds and snakes, a prequel centered on the life of a young Coriolanus Snow. Suzanne Collins wanted us to return to this dystopian and bloodthirsty world to find out more about this character who in Katniss Everdeen’s time has always been mysterious and impossible to understand, and now maybe we will finally have the chance to find out why he became a president. so despicable and hated by all.
At the beginning of reading, and throughout the book, this character has never ceased to surprise me because, contrary to how it might seem, this young Coriolanus has nothing like President Snow. This is a boy who, due to the war against District 13, has lost everything, his parents, his unborn little sister, their wealth and soon even their home if taxes are imposed. Once the Snow were a powerful family, now they are nobody, they eat beans and dress in what they find most decent. Coriolanus is left with only his grandmother and cousin Tigris, and the school, because all he wants is to be able to win the prize given by the school and pay for college at the end of that school year.
Corio is not a bad boy, nor despicable, and he has a heart as opposed to his future self. However, things change when he, having been appointed mentor of the Hunger Games tributes, is entrusted with the girl from district 12, district seen as the poorest, a nullity, of no importance, and he also takes it as an affront to his family. But then he begins to get to know his tribute, Lucy Gray Baird, and also begins to grow fond of her, and things change further.
Coriolanus in this book looks very much like a rebel, and not the one-piece man we know. You can’t help but notice the differences believe me. It seems more like you are seeing a young Katniss Everdeen than a young Coriolanus Snow. But the side that amazed me the most is the one who cares, the one who knows he has to do whatever he can to protect Lucy, because any wrong move he makes could affect her.
Despite everything, in the end we will come to understand why Snow’s future choices. 500 pages to have a small vision of a past that we would never have imagined, with the appearance of very important surnames in the trilogy, a step to the past in order to better understand the future.
