Well, first and foremost, and (you’re welcome), TLDR in advance, this 524 page prequel novel telling President Coronavirus Snow’s “origin story” can actually be summed up in ONE singular fucking sentence. Here it is: There IS no origin story, Crassus X Snow was an incorrigible , rotten to the CORE, entitled and (over privileged), ultimately (yes!) fucking BRAINWASHED and SOCIOPATHIC military general whose poor little apple, young Coronavirus (future president👎) Snow did NOT fall far from General CXSnow’s rotten fucking tree. If in FACT he ever fell at ALL. Ok, ok, sure. He fell. Into “secret/ not so secret as they’d hoped or planned for” (but still QUITE significantly RELATIVE) actual poverty , while struggling to maintain the illusion of sustained and stable wealth, influence etc and all of the trappings that come with being born into that particular setting/ socioeconomic status. Sad sad sad , brb , I’m crying.
That’s part one, my preliminary sum. Now part two, which is a brief bit of background, mostly for context on when and how I came into the material/ organisational purposes.
While I did read the main Hunger Games trilogy in my early 20s and saw all of the movies at least once, and thought they were decent etc,(for an Americanised / Young Adultified, CLEARLY Battle Royale inspired) dystopian franchise, I never became particularly invested in the franchise to the degree I’d obsessed over say, the Harry Potter franchise. Possibly, I was simply aged out of the material at that point, being fresh out of college etc (vs growing up in real time from age 8-17 alongside HP.) So, unlike HP or other franchises that have captured me mind, body, and SOUL, I only read them once/ saw them once/ definitely did NOT keep up with Suzanne Collins and her endeavors, neither her and endeavors contemporary to that time (2013-14 ish) nor her plans for the future. I mention this, because I typically AM an avid reader and more importantly an obsessive RE reader. My propensity to hyperfixate on a fictional literary franchise is quite a FORCE to be reckoned with, it honestly sometimes feels close to real life supernatural to me in its extreme presentations! Ask any of my friends/ ex lovers 😂But again, I’m cutting Collins a slight break due to my personal age at the time of me coming into her work, which was arguably already beyond “YA fiction” age/ her target audience, ppl etc. That should cover part two.
Moving onto part THREE, aka the bulk of my actual review aka my official attempt to clearly (and hopefully eloquently) articulate my exact REACTION and also my personal ASSESSMENT of this novel. First, beginning with one of my few positive notes, props are due for this novel having IMMEDIATELY gripped my attention/ absolute full immersion. My hyperfixation tendency was ALL the way activated. This was particularly impressive/ surprising for me since I recall first seeing the trailer for the film adaptation of this novel , years after the hype of the main trilogy had long died out. I can viscerally recall ROLLING my eyes during the trailer, snap writing it off as a gimmick / cheap cash grab/ etc. Definitely did NOT see the film or look into it at all. What brought me to the prequel novel was actually the announcement of the CAST for the upcoming film adaptation of the NEWEST Collins / Hunger games prequel novel! 12/10 cast, it feels almost personally tailored to me. So now I am at least AWARE of the fact that the latest HG film was, first and foremost, a prequel novel, as is the upcoming film. That’s cool. So anyway, I’m eager to dive back into this dystopic (still YA) universe and the book grabbed me right away! Yay. Jumping into the narrative through adolescent Snow’s perspective and hearing him describe/ reflect upon/ discuss with his two remaining relatives his childhood, which up to that point had been a bone fide STRUGGLE with REAL life war fare / PTSD/ visceral and profound human fucking HUNGER etc felt almost realer than I could conceivably comprehend. I say this from my own place / mixed status of both privilege (white/ female/ American/ attractive/ intelligent/ educated etc ) and also my own healthy, if far less extreme, degree of struggle/ LACK, having grown up on the rather far LOWER side of the (widely ranging) “Middle class American” socioeconomic status. Yes, I recall both of my parents constantly stressing about money. There were no summer camps for me, for example; if we needed Kleenex, we used toilet paper( the car broke down it was a PROBLEM they often had to have someone (or a shady loan entity if no such someone was available) bail them out of, which stacked on even MORE problems; were apartment dwellers aka NOT in living in an actual home with a yard; I shared a bedroom with my sister , etc. My friends/ classmates who DID live in houses / HAD their own rooms, etc. were basically LOADED as far as I was concerned, etc, poor, white people American shit basically, end. Still, that all being said, I cannot honestly say I have ever ACTUALLY felt / been forced to feel GENUINE human hunger/ malnourished at all in my life, nor have I ever truly feared for the safety of my body/ actual life nor the bodies / actual lives of my immediate family, in the way both Coronavirus Snow and his cousin Tigris Snow clearly did. Also no way in HELL did I know anyone or know anyone who knows anyone even who reduced themselves to actual fucking CANNIBALISM, out of pure rock bottom desperation. Nor have I seen first hand and in my own country the real life and up close destruction/ horrors of war fare, etc.
So anyway, etc, back to me being ALL the way locked in on this Snow sled. The early chapters in particular resulted in my feeling instant, GENUINE sympathy for Snow/ his relatives and also immense CURIOSITY to hear his tale unravel. CLEARLY, this was about to be one JUICY fucking origin story and I was dying to know exactly WHAT core memory/ tragedy transpired to clearly PROPELL teen Snow flying up, up, and all the way UP some more onto the path we all know ended in his “peaking” as President (tyrant/ dictator) Snow , singular supreme (and yes, on top💀)of all Panem. The haunted memories of having witnessed first-hand actual cannibalism in people he knew well/ attended class/ grew up with. Tigris’s constant but tenacious grind/ self sacrifice. Grand mams delusions and depressions, having nothing to show for her once pristine high status but her precious rose garden, etc. The very real fear that, should he fail to distinguish himself as one of the first batch of HG mentors, he might lose all hope of attending University and therefore, pursuing a career that might live up to the legacy of his name/ give him back “Everything his family lost and more”. Even Highbottom’s vendetta against him was a dark cloud relentlessly looming over his head, building yet more fear/ anxiety about what might happen should he fail, even minorly so. It was all very real and very well done and I was genuinely all the way sympathetic for him. But OBVIOUSLY, there WOULD in fact BE an actual TRAGEDY, of galvanizing, HORRIFIC fucking degree. 0% chance that wasn’t the case, so far as I was concerned , it simply would not make sense ANY other way . So I really, truly thought without a shadow of a doubt. Me being, my long list of obvious / less obvious flaws aside, a relatively, at LEAST halfway decent person aka NOT an incorrigible /mind bogglingly fucking DISGUSTING example of (actually lower than POND scum ) human fucking FECES. Anyway hahaha more on that , don’t worry.
Moving on for a quick second to address Snow’s connection / relationship with “his” tribute Lucy Gray. Obviously, his early actions in the games were 100% self interested, and that fact was not even disguised. But once he makes the snap call to jump into the truck with her/ winds up in the monkey cage and all that transpires from there, I for one fell under the impression that he genuinely started to care for her / appreciate her as a person, maybe even a special person, and possibly EVEN a person of “quality” despite her not being Capitol. Not just a tribute/ his destined tool/ personal leg up from his downtrodden life. Again, YES, he only jumped into that truck with her because (despite him having been the ONLY mentor to greet their tribute at the station IN PERSON/ him also having offered her one of his grand mams legendary/ infamous/ coveted/ heavily symbolic precious roses, etc, he could TELL despite all that EFFORT, she still did not trust him one whit. As she was correct not to😂 But anyway so YES, it was still self-interest fuelling him when he jumped into that truck. But once he’s in the monkey cage and there’s no stopping the momentum from there, I felt a significant/ palpable / most importantly GENUINE change in both his TREATMENT of her and also his private INNER monologue regarding her. And that wasn’t only because she was a pretty girl, and him a hormonal teenage boy, or so I thought. Having finished the novel, it possibly was only horniness after all😂
The turning point for me so far as my sympathy for Snow’s character came at the tribute interviews leading up to the start of the Hunger Games, after Lucy Gray plays a heartfelt ballad alluding to the ups and downs of her past, her heartbreaks, her shames, and yes, clearly, her ex lover. The switch was immediate, shocking, even, and completely irrevocable. While I might have understood him feeling a TAD jealous to hear a personal song alluding to an ex, his inner monologue FAR surpassed jealous, and went straight into intense possessiveness / misogynistic/ actual INCEL fucking vibes. He was appalled that she had had an ex lover at all 😂(how dare she!) And I was WELL beyond DISGUSTED to read every bit of it. Not only that, but he began to diminish her INNATE powers of charm/ talent etc, saying things like “but the Capitol knew she was HIS girl and that HE was the real star of the show. “ So, this was the precise turning point for me regarding my opinion of Snow’s character, and it was a TOTAL 180 from sympathetic/ compassionate / curious to DISgusted/ appalled / horrified with not a single microcosm of sympathy left.
Prior to this point, there were definitely hints / more than hints that he was , in fact , irredeemably abhorrent from the start, for example, his reflections upon/ written responses to Dr. Gaul’s essay topics. There were several of these, and he came up with responses that were a mostly equal combination of clearly contrived / generic answers and also what appeared to be his honest, innermost feelings on the subject . He lingered on/ even admitted to himself (with pure conviction, by the way) to being driven by absolute CONTROL, and pretty much nothing else. I recall him almost literally saying something along the lines of “but he didn’t care about that, for him it was all about control.” In other words, I came to the slow but absolute realisation that the “beast” was, in fact, always in him, as it was in his father before him from what we’ve surmised about General CrassusXSnow and PROBABLY his father before him, and so on.
Stepping away from my feelings on Snow for a minute, I wanted to briefly address my thoughts on the pacing . While it had a slow ish start, that wasn’t a problem because Snow’s struggle felt so real and daunting but also exciting. Once the action picked up with the (baited) tribute attack on the (baiting) mentor who was Snow’s classmate/ childhood friend and the subsequent gunning down of that same tribute, it went right from 0-20 and was jam packed with action for a while. The hunger games event itself was honestly on the boring side, surprisingly, and I’m not sure if that’s because so much murder/ violence happened in the events directly leading up to them / only half or maybe even less tributes were left alive to even participate, or if they actually were boring considering the “event” is a BATTLE ARENA to the DEATH full of TEENAGERS/ CHILDREN 😂Either way, it was a lot of waiting around, etc., with most of the tributes including Lucy Gray hiding out/ being minimally spotted. Snow and Lucy’s overall plan / the twist with him suggesting she put rat poison in the compact mirror was definitely an exciting surprise that built a ton of tension, but it was slow to pay off, etc. And then there was the whole ordeal with the neon snakes and Dr. Gaul who I haven’t even touched on yet. Ther really is not much to say about Dr. Gaul, other than, it’s safe to assume she is EXACTLY what she appears to be, aka an eccentric but UTTERLY sadistic fucking sociopath , who took a keen interest in developing Snow and his world view, having noticed that he is ALSO an irredeemable fucking sociopath. Her singling him out/ almost (but not quite😂) favoring him is yet more evidence that the proper essence (aka a profound fucking LACK of even a SINGULAR, microscopic fucking DROP of a human soul😂) was already deeply embedded in him, or I guess if we’re using the word soul, I should probably say MISSING from him 😂The stunt Gaul pulled with the snakes and Snow’s classmate was shocking and also horrible, but it set up the later plot point of her dumping those same snakes into the ARENA, as a surprise “punishment” / wild card, against the districts figuratively and the remaining tributes literally, and also gave him the private knowledge he needed regarding how the snakes worked. This allowed him to 1. Be able to arrive at the strong suspicion that Gaul was indeed going to use the snakes on the tributes and 2. Make the impulsive decision to drop the handkerchief embedded with Lucy Gray’s smell into their tank and save her ( and her alone!) from their attack. Which added yet another layer of suspense / tension, because his having done that could only be construed as nothing other than exactly what it was, aka blatant fucking CHEATNG, and not even really SLY cheating at that, because the handkerchief was SURE to be discovered , especially after Lucy Gray made such a spectacle with the snakes, wearing them, singing to them, etc while at least a few of the other remaining tributes got immediately annihilated by them until the rain finally drowned the snakes out. So anyway, I was definitely curious what repercussions Snow might end up facing or not facing over that whole situation. As to whether or not he WOULD face repercussions, I was basically divided on whether I thought he would or not; I was SURE he WOULD be discovered (which he was) and Dr Gaul’s favoring him was FAR more subtle / mysterious/ precariohs/ in question even than Dean Highbottoms glaringly evident fucking HATRED for him was. So anyway, long story short, Snow and Lucy Gray were able to defy all logic/ odds and Lucy Gray did indeed “win” the 10th Hunger Games by surviving the 23 other tributes . Which also concluded the series of violence / action / suspense that hadn’t really stopped for even a second since the first tribute/ mentor went down / the arena tour bombing / etc .
The next phase of the book took a hard left, when the elation of Lucy Gray’s and by proxy, Snow’s, victory in the Hunger Games was eclipsed by Dean Highbottom calling Snow into his office and presenting him with the condemning evidence of his having cheated in the Hunger Games, first by sneaking her Academy meals (staunchly forbidden), next by suggesting the rat poison , and most unequivocally of all, the handkerchief he dropped into the snake tank. It turns out there were indeed to be repercussions, and hard ones, because instead of receiving the brand new Plinth prize (a full ride to the university sponsored by Sejanus Plinth’s up-jumped father ), he was left with little other choice than to pay his penance by joining the PeaceKeepers, which as I understand it is a 20 year minimum sentence.
This part of the book set a slower but still steady pace, and it came with a ray of sunshine in the form of Lucy Gray having been safely transported back to District 12, which was where Snow requested to be stationed, a request which was granted without issue. Romance blossoms during this part of the book, but glaring red flags undercut most of the sweetness. I already figured any romance between Snow and Lucy Gray was sure to be doomed to implode in on some flavor of tragedy or another, because they were so evidently from opposite worlds, which in itself is not a complete recipe for disaster, but the two clearly also held polar opposite, utterly incompatible worldviews. The hints were not subtle; Snow felt viscerally offended by the sound of the mockingjays (the songs of which Lucy Gray so clearly treasured) and not only that, but he cringed bodily even at the sound of Lucy Gray and her Covey’s “non lyrical/traditional Covey” songs, likening those songs to the “noise” the mockingjays made. Throughout all of his inner monologue regarding these things I just about felt sick to my stomach, and scared for Lucy Gray.
Anyway, while the two unlikely lovers did have all of one whimsical day at the lake, the situation in District 12 snowballed and imploded all the way from that idyllic day. Sejanus got wrapped up in some rebel movement, which he naively confided to Snow who, RECORDED the confession via the jabberjays ; a bunch of people ended up in the wrong place at the right time and Snow ended up shooting the mayors daughter while one of the rebels shot Billy Taupe. It’s all bad bad and worse and worse, and honestly this last part of the book was almost impossible to get through , because not only are the events themselves quite horrible and tragic, but Snow’s inner monologues reached an ALL time low and was, quite frankly, completely fucking insufferable.
I guess now is a good time as ever to address Sejanus Plinth, who is probably the most tragic figure in this story. It was interesting , at the very beginning of the novel, when Snow first encounters Sejanus, he thinks about Sejanus with nothing but disdain and sour bitterness , coveting Sejanus’s status and wealth, looking down on him as “upjumped district spawn”. Since I innately held Snow’s sympathy at this time in the novel, I naturally was also weary of Sejanus . But he very quickly shows himself to be not at all what Snow is portraying him as. Sejanus is deeply empathetic and massively conflicted about his position in society, and is unable to separate himself from the district-dwelling citizens of Panem, who he still identifies as one of. Vocalised torment/confliction becomes minor acts of rebellion which culminates when Sejanus somehow sneaks into the arena to perform a district folk-y death rite onto the corpse of Marcus, who was his tribute and also his prior classmate. It comes to an even bigger head in act 3 of the book, when Sejanus actually joins a group of rebels and forges a plan to free an imprisoned district member and then run off north to live a life of freedom with them. We all know how that ends, Snow uses the jabberjays to RECORD Sejanus’s heart felt confession on the entire plot, this is after Snow has successfully MANIPULATED the living fuck out of Sejanus and has him convinced they are “as good as brothers” to one another. Sejanus’s death by hanging and his final, broken record cry out for his Ma was definitely the saddest part of the book for me, and will haunt me for sometime. So, me being deeply saddened by this occurrence straight into having to plod through the novel’s closing moments, which is saturated with a progressively more infuriating/ disgusting Snow inner monologue, made the novel’s final act feel flawed, as far as pacing. Even Lucy Gray’s poetic / mysterious disappearance , which mirrors the song of her name sake, fell flat for me, because I was so fed up with Snow’s insufferable thoughts.
Ok I’m going to try to wrap this up, I seem to have lost my way. As I said at the very beginning, TLDR, Snow is an abhorrent, pathetic excuse for a human being and he always in fact was. There is no “origin story”. I just want to cite a few examples that have me infuriated beyond recognition, and that should about wrap this bone fide treatise on “The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes”.
Once he runs away with Lucy Gray (not out of love or romance but because he feels the discovery of the guns with which he murdered the mayors daughter is inevitable and will result in his hanging), he actually ends up FINDING the guns and realizing he can return to his regular life, which had just begun to turn around politically and professionally. With the damning guns in hand, reflects on things Billy Taupe had said about Lucy Gray and uses Billy Taupes words to reflect back on the Hunger Games. He ends up twisting the horrific tragedies of the games into examples of Lucy Gray being a cold hearted , blood thirsty murderer, when in REALITY, she was acting on the plan HE had suggested and doing what SHE had to to fucking survive, it’s all just so despicable, straight up fucking gas-lighting INCEL shit and it was very hard to read.
Post Sejanus‘s hanging , he’s gathering Sejanus’s remaining possessions and considering writing to the Plinths. He literally thinks to himself “‘maybe ma will still bake me cookies” or some slick PETTY self-interested shit along those lines in the face of a woman losing her ONLY son and by HIS disgusting hand, too.
He takes Sejanus’s secret cash stashand sends it Tigris/ his grand mam but “is able to intercept it” once he’s back in the Capitol and everything is actually great after all, like what in the actual FUCK, this act / comment infuriates me beyond ALL comprehension every time I have the displeasure of recalling it. Especially after how selfless / self-sacrificing Tigris had proven to be regarding Snow/ the family in general. WHY was it so important he stow away that extra cash for himself???? He had the WORLD on a fucking silver PLATTER by that point, I just canNOT fucking EVEN with this guy.
One more minor thing, while I find it rather massively fucked up that Snow just basically.. REPLACED Sejanus in every way regarding the Plinth family…. By literally BECOMING Plinth’s heir/ being the one to receive paid for University/ etc… it’s weirdly (disgustingly) poetic. Plinth’s industry is munitions and Sejanus his actual son was a pacifist, while Snow is anything BUT. They deserve each other I guess???? Makes me sick though, if the Plinths KNEW their son’s death was on that despicable Snow’s hand, SURELY, it would not have panned out so perfectly for that fuck.
Okay, I’ve gone wayyyyy deeper into this than I ever intended 😂Time to finally close this out, but again, part of why this book made me so mad was, because it’s BASICALLY, “oh hey look, an origin story on a horrible villain! It’s 524 pages! Can’t wait” but in fact , it’s TLDR, Snow is an incorrigibly disgusting SOCIOpath and always fucking was, THE END, goodbye, thanks for playing!
That being said, I’d like to finish out with a few positive points, because I DID overall enjoy the book as much as I HATE Show with every fiber of my being. I really liked Tigris as a character, she seems to GENUINELY care about her small remaining family members, one of whom (unfortunately for her!) is Snow. Not only that, but she also seems to legitimately have passion for fashion design as an art form. AKA, she has an actual SOUL somehow, in a family of absolute sociopaths. Honestly, neither Snow NOR the Grandmam fucking deserve her. Side note, I don’t think this occurred in the book but (I sort of wish it had!), but in the film adaptation, there’s a scene where Tigris (played by Hunter Schafer) tells Snow the only thing she can recall about his father, who he does in fact resemble physically, is the HATRED she could see and feel in his eyes. Then, in one of the final scenes of the movie, Snow is back “at the top” with his whole disgusting life trajectory ahead of him, and Tigris reassures him, he looks great, and she pats his lapel and tells him “You look just like your father.” And while the profound SADNESS in her tone/ EYES is CLEARLY lost on Snow’s sociopathic ass, it was not lost on me nor any semi-competent viewer I’m sure.
I also really loved all things Covey and Lucy Gray and pretty much every single one of the lyrics/ songs we got through that tiny niche subculture. My favorite song is the song Lucy Gray performed at the reaping, second favorite being the song she performed at the interview, least favorite song being (obviously) the one she wrote about Snow before she became enlightened as to his true colors.
Finally, I was surprised by how moved I was with the Dean Highbottom character. Again, in the beginning I was inclined to despise him, because he had it out so hard against Snow. And once I learned that DeanHighbottom/CXSnow had been besties in college but had fallen out hard, I assumed it was over some love triangle regarding Snow’s mother which CXSnow obv “came out on top” (eww I HATE THAT I JUST SAID THAT.) But anyway, learning that the Hunger Games were originally thought up by a drunk/ younger Highbottom as a LARK, and then he ended up becoming CREDITED for them after they became very much fucking REAL, 10 years later still REAL, just shattered my fucking HEART. His addiction made so much sense once I learned that as did his hatred of Snow, because he clearly saw from the GET what it took me 200 pages to see! Also shout out to Peter Dinklage’s performance, which was very heart wrenching. Snow honestly kind of did Highbottom a favour, poisoning him at the end there, because he was finally out of his misery. 💔
Congrats to anyone who made it this far in this treatise, there are definitely Reddit memes that say in a picture/ caption what I said in 4000 plus words, but hey. Let me know your thoughts on my review/ the book if you have a care to! Cheers
