The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

Basically I had questions about whether or not I would read this book. Snow was about as evil as a person could get. Poisoning those who might be a challenge to him, having children kill each other, having people design things to do just that – it all points to a person who was either totally insane, near-totally evil or both.

I tend to think both.

On the other hand I'm sort of a completist when I get 'into' something so I had to read the book. I think it was well written, it does provide some reasons why he turned out to be the villain he was and it shows how Panem seemed kind of frozen in time with no progress along any lines (except, perhaps, weapons) at least from when he was very young to the trilogy.

It also gives us a view of an early form of Hunger Games using an old arena for the contest. The characters are well done (even if they are despicable) and a lot of stuff ties in to explaining just how he ended up the villain that he did (although none of it was an excuse for what he ended up doing.)

Dr. Gaul is very similar to the Nazi scientists and Unit 731 of the Japanese who thought scientific progress at any cost justified what they did to people. The Peacekeepers are like the earlier SS of Germany.

Lucy was a really nice person but her goodness was overshadowed by Snow's evil nature in his 'relationship' with her and how things ended was expected.

I would rather, though, have had a book about what led up to Panem, why it was divided into districts, how the Capitol came to be, what caused the districts to be so poor and was Panem the only functional country left. Was there a world war and if so what happened to other countries? Were there still any satellites in orbit and could any information be obtained from them?

The climate change events would also have been something to cover, especially with the number of people who today don't believe there is any climate change and that even it there is humans have nothing to do with it.

To me that type of book would have been more interesting then this one. There was no character growth for Snow. We already knew the Capitol people cared nothing for anyone but themselves. We already knew Panem was divided into districts and the people in them were almost slaves to the Capitol. We already knew poverty was everywhere except in the Capitol. I really wanted to see how we got from the present to the world of the Hunger Games.

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