I’ll start this review out by giving my feelings on the original Hunger Games trilogy, for purposes of calibration. I think Katniss is an amazing character, her trauma is beautifully depicted, and the story is wonderful. I also think that Suzanne Collins’ worldbuilding is pretty thin, and the 3rd book went more than a little off the rails. Fortunately things like weak worldbuilding and plot holes don’t necessarily hurt my enjoyment of what is essentially a character-driven story. I give The Hunger Games and Catching Fire 5 stars, and Mockingjay 4. Just so everyone’s got a good reference point.
I give The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes 3. It had some cool stuff in it, but overall it wasn’t great. No spoilers past the first few pages.
So I know I’m not the only person who was startled that the Hunger Games prequel was going to cover the 10th Games, rather than the 1st. Turns out I wasn’t giving Collins enough credit, because we actually are seeing the beginnings of the Hunger Games in a very real sense.
This isn’t the Capitol we know. The first, failed rebellion was a very near thing - the Capitol came very, very close to losing the war. The citizenry had been starving, had survived heavy bombing raids, was very militarized - these aren’t the decadent pampered folks from Katniss’ era. The lines between District and Capitol are not nearly as hardened - one major character in the book came from District 2, but his family was wealthy enough to buy their way into the Capitol.
The early Hunger Games reflect this different reality. The first few, with the Capitol struggling to rebuild, were literally just hauling the tributes from the Districts, tossing them in a pit with some weapons, and unceremoniously shipping the last one alive home. There’s neither pomp nor pageantry, no career tributes, no prizes for the victors, no “glory” whatsoever. And no one watches, Capitol or District. The Districts don’t have televisions, and the Capitol isn’t interested. Most Capitol citizens think the whole thing is barbaric and inhumanly cruel anyway.
The protagonist of this book is a young Coriolanus Snow, about 18 years old, still a student. The Snows are a proud family, rich and powerful before the war, but having been heavily invested in District 13 they are on the edge of insolvency. Coryo Snow is smart and determined to excel, and restore his family to glory.
They’re trying something new for the Games this year - assigning each tribute a Capitol mentor. It’s not 100% clear what their job is going to be, but Snow is nonetheless displeased when he’s assigned the girl tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low.
While seeing the early postwar Capitol (and some glimpses of the early postwar Districts) was interesting, that’s about the best that can be said about the books. Having a young President Snow as the protagonist was an interesting choice, because President Snow is far from a sympathetic character. I’m sorry to say that she mostly doesn’t rise to the challenge. Trying to have him be someone we could empathize with while also trying to make him someone who could grow into the cold, cruel despot we know from Katniss’ time is a very narrow line to walk. The result is very uneven - he reads like two different characters mashed together into one. It doesn’t really work.
Other complaints include the relationship between Snow and the tribute from 12, which never felt solidly written to me. It wasn’t fundamentally unbelievable, but Collins didn’t lay the groundwork to support where she went with it. It’s supposed to be one of the central parts of the story, but it just felt very hollow.
Final complaint: too many connections to the original trilogy. This might seem a little odd for a complaint, so I’ll elaborate. We see Snow, obviously, and we also see Tigris (the surgically-altered former stylist who hides Katniss & company in Mockingjay). We get familiar names in the Capitol, like Heavensbee and Crane. We see the Seam, the Hob, and the bakery in District 12. The overall effect is something like R2-D2 in the prequel trilogy: him having been there for all that just introduces plot holes to no added value. I have a similar complaint about this book. Panem is large - Collins could have told a similar story without retreading in District 12. All the connections were distracting and I don’t think really added anything.
And one final note - this book had the worst-timed release of any book I can ever imagine. The strength of the original trilogy was Katniss Everdeen. This book lacked that compelling central character, and suffered for it. Her absence, either in fact or in spirit, was only exacerbated by the protests going on nationwide. It felt like a glaring hole. No one’s fault, but I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I’d read it in a world less on the brink.