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OLDER FICTION
Collins, Suzanne

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

528 pp. | Scholastic | May, 2020 | Trade ISBN 978-1-338-63518-8 $27.99
(2) YA In this prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy (beginning with The Hunger Games, rev. 9/08), the Games are in their infancy, and eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow, the future president of Panem, is mentoring tribute Lucy Gray Baird, a beguiling singer-songwriter from District 12--but, as always, there are twists. First, quite a few mentors and tributes die before the games even start, victims of unfortunate "accidents" or rebel attacks. Second, there is a budding (though generally unconvincing) romance between Coriolanus and Lucy Gray. The play-by-play account of the Games occupies less of the book's attention than does Snow's character development. Despite an aristocratic background, the Snow family has fallen on hard times, and Coriolanus's future hinges on his success as a mentor, even as he sorts through his feelings about the Capitol-district enmity and about Lucy Gray. The rising action develops rather haltingly, and the downbeat ending seems to emphasize the worst in human nature. However, readers who make it past the slow beginning may find that Collins's storytelling gifts, characteristically formidable here, outweigh any shortcomings.
Reviewer: Jonathan Hunt | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2020

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