'The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes' review: 'Hunger Games' prequel's darkly funny, way too long
distinctive style of clothing? The narrative never really leaves Coriolanus’ side, which strands the reader on the threshold of Lucy Gray's action. The original trilogy always had a light meta quality, characters on camera balancing interior desires with winning the crowd. Some key moments in take place while people sit in a room watching TV and tapping their computers.
Coriolanus has a more intriguing double act with his fellow student Sejanus Plinth, the son of an upjumped District 2 tycoon. He's a new-money dreamer with a rebellious spirit who doesn’t belong in the Capitol, and doesn’t care to. "What a waste of a dynasty," Coriolanus thinks — and a lot of the book's first half exudes that line's tone of withering vexation.
Coriolanus, Sejanus, and did I mention Dean Highbottom? You feel we’re disappearing up someplace. The names are ridiculous — Persephone Price, Satyria Click, Domitia Whimsiwick, Lysistrata Vickers — which could be the point. The first and best act ofcarves into an amoral world of preening wealth and corrosive power. Collins describes food and fashion with a primal awe that captures Coriolanus’ starving good taste, and she turns the postwar Capitol into a social arena.
The storytelling itself trends desperate at times. Chapters close on violent cliffhangers that edge into parody: "Then the world exploded." Was there a concern that hardcore-action readers would get bored with posh baby fascistsing around a murder-y prep school? There's also a limp secondary antagonist, a mad scientist named Dr. Gaul, who operates a laboratory full of helpful twists and offers dull lectures about "mankind in its natural state.
Dr. Gaul proves those opening epigraphs weren’t messing around. In the acknowledgments, the writer thanks her father for teaching her "about the Enlightenment thinkers and the state of nature debate from an early age," so that's one new parenting goal for this new parent. I admire the ambitions, but all the explicit philosophy reflects another prequel problem: the urge to. The expository impulse brings momentum to a halt. With bloody betrayal spiraling all around, Dr.
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