Reviews with content warning for Pandemic/Epidemic - A Cantiga dos Pássaros e das Serpentes

This book had me hooked from the get go as did the original trilogy. I went into it not knowing what to expect and I was pleasantly surprised.

It is far more darker than the original trilogy but I still loved every page.

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c_dmckinney's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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chrisljm's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

528 pages of Snow being a loser.

Going to expand on my review for the sake of explaining that I don't dislike this book. I just dislike losers. I liked that Suzanne Collins gave us a prequel and gave background to the games and how it essentially all started, but I just wasn't too invested in the story because I never cared to learn more about Snow's life.

I think it's fair that other readers didn't enjoy this book because it does get a bit long and the last third does drag, but I think the people who see this book as an attempt to sympathize Snow as a villain just doesn't understand Suzanne Collins or what she wrote. We see how Snow had a tough childhood, being poor and living through war, but he is very much still cruel and narcissistic. There is in no way for this book to be taken as an attempt to get you on Snow's side.

While I personally didn't give a fuck about Snow's backstory, I think this is worth reading if you want insight on how the modern version of the games came to be. In my opinion it's less about Snow and more of an origin story to the Panem we see in The Hunger Games trilogy, and I think the book is more enjoyable if you read it with this in mind.

I also want to say that the dislike this book gets makes me firm on my stance in hating when people ask for more books on the other Hunger Game years. We have all we need to know from the trilogy. It's unnecessary and just another way for people to thoughtlessly consume media. The Hunger Games portion of this book was very uncomfortable to read, especially since I already sat through the cruelty of the games twice for the trilogy. If we were to read anymore of the games, it would just become cruelty for entertainment, which literally goes against the theme of the series.

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beautifulpaxielreads's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

Reviewed 26/04/24 (1st reread)

I'll say this for Suzanne Collins - the woman knows how to craft a page-turner.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (TBOSAS) was just immaculate. I decided to bump up my rating from my previous reading of this - 4.5 rather than 5 purely because our narrator, Coriolanus Snow was so despicable (beautifully written, though!).

I read this first in 2020 - the year it came out - and then again in 2024, after I saw the film adaptation. I'm glad I saw the movie first - for while the film is very well-made and incredibly gripping to watch, as an adaptation, it cannot hold a candle to the depth and detail of the original work.

This is understandable (and in my opinion, inevitable) when you are translating a work of literature to the screen, as each medium works differently to communicate its message to the audience - a film works by showing you what you need to know, whereas a novel tells you.

The strength of TBOSAS as a novel lies in its narrative voice - that of the aforementioned Coriolanus Snow. Coriolanus begins the novel as an impoverished student with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement and vanity, and ends it as

a murderer who becomes the adopted heir (and unofficially, son) of a wealthy family whose real son's death Snow had a direct hand in causing

.

The characterisation was superb (I particularly loved Lysistrata), the crafting of suspense, tension, and plot masterful, the examination of the nature vs. nurture debate thought-provoking, and the callbacks to the original Hunger Games trilogy were cleverly inserted and not overdone.

Having read the book previously (and seen the film), I knew what was coming, and so at these points I would have to put the book down to mentally prepare myself before returning to it. The sense of dread was palpable, and the cliffhanger at the end of each chapter made it really hard not to keep reading - I can see why I raced through it in a day the first time.

TBOSAS was a chilling, suspenseful, and highly engrossing read.

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