The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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I finished the prequel of the Hunger Games last night. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes was definitely an interesting read. It takes you all the way back to the 10th Hunger Games. It was way before the 74th and the beginning of what we both watched and read. Obviously right. The book shows you what the games started out as. The tributes were treated like animals and in the tenth games they brought in Capitol students to be mentors. One of those students even came up with the beginnings of the betting pool. We meet Snow's ancestors and find out where the line of psycho began. There are three parts to this book and she thought it out well. Part One is The Mentor. We are introduced to the Capitol and the students that we will later come to see in different parts of the Hunger Games. The very first name I know everyone will recognize is Corialinus Snow. Great ancestor of the insane President Snow that we love to hate. The Hunger Games have pretty much just started and the head game maker needs to get more interaction between the audience, including the districts, and the Games. Enter the top families kids. Corilanus Snow, Livia Cardew, Palmyra Monty, Sejanus Plinth, Florus Friend, Io Jasper, Urban Canville, Persephone Price, Festus Creed, Dennis Fling, Iphigenia Moss, Apollo Ring, Diana Ring, Vipsania Sickle, Pliny Harrington, Juno Phillips, Hilarius Heavensbee, Gaius Breen, Androcles Anderson, Domitia Whimsiwick, Arachne Crane, Clemensia Dovecote, Felix Ravinstill, and Lysistrata Vickers. All these teens have been chosen to be mentors to the district tributes. All during this time, you get to see how the tributes are treated and meet the head gamer herself, Dr Gaul. This woman is insane yet some of her logic makes sense. You'll have to read it to find out because it's like putting together a puzzle with her. The second part is The Prize. This part takes you into the games. The tenth Hunger Games where everything pretty much started. Yes, it's the tenth Hunger Games but this is where the idea of "more" started. Corilianus helps with the idea of the betting and being able to send food and water to the tributes in the arena. The point now is to be the winner of the games and with the win comes a prize. In layman's terms it would be a scholarship to what I would consider a college which Corilanius needs. Not that anyone knows it. He's kept that under wraps pretty well. Corilanius gets the female tribute from district 12, Lucy Gray Baird. They get close in the first part but now that they're talking and acting like she can win the games, they get really close. You start to root for their relationship even though you may or may not like the boy at this point. I know I went back and forth on that and in the end hated him. The third part is The Peacekeeper. This is where everything comes to a head. Corilinus grows up real fast. He was caught in a way, cheating in the games and was told that he had the option of being expelled or sign up to be a peacekeeper by the end of the day. Of course he chose the later and he specifically asked to go to District 12. The thought was for him to be in some way reunited with Lucy Gray. I know that I'm doing a crappy job explaining this book but the problem is I want to talk about it without giving a lot of it away. It's a hard spot to be in but I really want to talk about this book lol. It was good and it was different. It was the beginning of seeing how the games progressed to what we saw unfold in her original series. The end was a shocker but you can see that the poison of the Snows goes back a long way. If you've read it please leave a comment lol. Fans of the original series will definitely appreciate this book. *picture from google