If you haven’t picked up on it by now, you should know that I am a MASSIVE fan of The Hunger Games series — both the books and the movies. I’ve posted reviews for all of the books except the first prequel: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. So that’s what I’m here for today.

(Side note: this is the song that Olivia Rodrigo wrote for the movie, and it’s supposed to be from the perspective of Snow’s love interest, Lucy Gray Baird. The lyricism and the music is beautiful and fits perfectly with TBOSAS, so if you want to read this review while listening to it, feel free <3)

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (which I’ll either call Ballad or TBOSAS from now on), gives us the story of our most hated President Coriolanus Snow. This book is written in 3rd person, not 1st person like the rest of the books in the series, but that little detail really makes a huge impact. It makes Snow seem deattached from the rest of the character cast, which fits his opposition to the districts and just his evil personality in general.

But he wasn’t always an evil dictator — Suzanne Collins does a wonderful job showing us Snow’s character development, his worldview, and how his experience with both the war and the early version of Hunger Games led him to grasp for control over chaos, Capitol over district, and jabberjays over mockingjays. (You might not get that last reference if you haven’t read the book yet, but oh well.)

Snow’s relationships with his cousin Tigris and his grandmother show his love for the Capitol and all the opulence and security it offers, although Tigris has the warmth and compassion that Snow comes to resent and push away. His accidental “friendship” with Sejanus shows us how biased he was against the districts to begin with, and how that bias only got stronger after his mentorship and experiece in the 10th Hunger Games.

His relationship with Dr. Gaul is also really important and symbolic. Dr. Gaul, with all her psychotic sadism, had a key role in making Coriolanus into the evil, power-hungry man he soon became. She was the one who got him thinking about chaos versus control, and eventually convinced him that the Hunger Games were the only way to properly control the districts: to Snow and Dr. Gaul, they were doing everybody a favor by continuing the Hunger Games.

TBOSAS also shows us how and why the Hunger Games began, and the incredible emotional and mental impact that had on its creator (who I won’t name for the sake of not spoiling it).

We’re also introduced to Lucy Gray, Snow’s love interest and mentee in the Hunger Games. This is where the songbird and snake symbolism comes from: with Lucy Gray embodying the rebellious, independent mockingjays and Snow embodying the poisonous snake. The rest of her life after her fallout with Snow is left a mystery, but that honestly just adds to the story in a positive, suspenseful way. As far as the incredible parallels between Lucy Gray adn Katniss, I probably can’t say much for the sake of spoilers, as well as potential fan theories, but let’s just say that this Pinterest meme sums it up pretty well.

(And here’s another one talking about the songbird/snake symbolism)

The music and costumes in the movie were also beautiful, and fit the book so well. In the song Can’t Catch Me Now, Olivia sings “there’s blood on the side of the mountain, it’s turning a new shade of red”. And in the movie, Snow’s red jacket gets darker and darker the more people he kills. The film color also gets progressively cooler as the movie goes on, symbolizing how Snow gets colder and colder throughout the book and eventually becomes the President Snow we all know and despise. And the way Suzanne writes her epilogues is absolutely unmatched. During the entire book, Snow is referred to as Coriolanus or Coryo — in the epilogue he’s only referred to as “Snow.”

Coincidence? I think not. Suzanne Collins is too much of a legend for that.