Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

54 reviews

raeb's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Drug use, Grief, Gun violence, Blood, Drug abuse, Murder, Violence, Body horror, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Injury/injury detail, Classism, Medical content, Police brutality, and War

Moderate: Gore, Torture, and Dementia

anavae's review

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Toxic friendship, Police brutality, Physical abuse, Murder, Child death, Death, and War

brittaka's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.5

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an excellent prequel to the Hunger Games series! Using Snow’s first-person perspective and his internal musings on the state of nature debate, Collins does a masterful job of displaying the eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow’s descent into the bloodthirsty, villainous President Snow readers of the original series will recognize. On a philosophical level, I love that Collins uses this narrative to argue that Thomas Hobbes (who wrote that humanity needs to be controlled in order to be “civilized”) is wrong. Throughout the book, readers see firsthand that those who champion the need for oppressive and violent control and order only do so in the name in maintaining their own sense of supremacy. Snow doesn’t do any of what he does in this story for the Capitol, for the people of Panem, for Lucy Gray, or even for Tigris and the Grandma’am—it’s all for himself, to satiate his own unquenchable desire for power, authority, and complete control. Snow merely uses Hobbes’s philosophies to justify his violent and selfish actions, which (along with Lucy Gray’s contradicting belief that human beings are good at heart) promotes the idea that Hobbes and Snow have it wrong—an idea that Collins fully endorses in the Hunger Games series itself. In other words, this book says “be anti-facist!” and “ACAB” in all the best ways, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has read the original series!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Classism, Murder, Confinement, Gaslighting, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Grief, Police brutality, and Gun violence

Minor: Drug use, Drug abuse, Animal death, and Death of parent

margaret721's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Murder, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Death of parent, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Police brutality, Gun violence, Animal cruelty, Cannibalism, and Medical content

studydniowka's review

adventurous challenging dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

Bardzo dobra młodzieżowa (i nie tylko) dystopia.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Bullying, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Deportation, Grief, Medical trauma, Torture, Toxic relationship, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Sexism, Slavery, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Colonisation, Body horror, Forced institutionalization, Murder, War, Xenophobia, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, and Violence

k_galloway's review

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

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

3.75

honestly this book could be about 200 pages shorter but the last 100 pages are absolutely insane. read it just for the ending.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Toxic friendship, Blood, Colonisation, Death, Gore, Genocide, Injury/injury detail, Toxic relationship, Gun violence, Murder, Police brutality, Violence, and War

meghanelizabeth's review

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Child death, War, and Blood

Moderate: Police brutality, Injury/injury detail, Grief, Cannibalism, Violence, Gun violence, Gore, Death of parent, Death, Classism, Alcohol, and Torture

tinybluepixel's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Alcohol, Gore, Addiction, Classism, Physical abuse, Death, War, Gun violence, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Police brutality, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: War, Confinement, Injury/injury detail, Death of parent, and Vomit

Minor: Infidelity

hannahbailey's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

TW: violence, death (of parent, children), torture, war, gun violence, toxic relationship, animal death/cruelty, body horror, suicide attempt, grief, cannibalism, emotional abuse, forced institutionalisation, stalking, genocide, vomit

It was great to be back in Panem again-I've missed it! I'm aware how unhinged that sounds given the horrendous TWs I've listed above. But it's YA! And its Panem, a place we know is not famous for its kindness and generosity towards children.

So it was interesting to see Panem from the perspectives of Capitol citizens, however the perspective is limited through Coriolanus' gaze...make of that what you will 🥸 The POV was not quite a revelatory as I'd hoped it would be. Although, as with everything Suzanne Collins writes, I'm now thinking maybe this was intentional. There's no big reveal, we go to war and we fight and we kill each other because that's what humans do. There's no deeper message to be understood or secret to be discovered. Dammit Suzanne, you got me again! We have to stan.

I of course enjoyed the Hunger Games part, how could I not?! But the rest was overly long and stretched out. I didn't feel like we were given anything new, especially as District 12 was featured again over other districts. I wanted a lot more from Snow than I was given too. In every aspect of the novel and THG world, I'm itching to know more. Maybe one day we'll get the Finnick and Joanna novellas we deserve!

I know it's cringe and cliche but I want nothing more than for the movie adaptation to end with a close up of young Snow's face slowly morphing into old Snow's face either during his most evil in Catching Fire or at the end of Mockingjay when he *redacted*. The satisfaction would be too much to bear!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Blood, Child death, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, War, Alcohol, Body horror, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/injury detail, Suicide attempt, Torture, Animal cruelty, Gore, Gun violence, Cannibalism, Toxic friendship, Vomit, Death of parent, Drug use, Genocide, and Grief

tahsintries's review

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Murder, and Child death

Moderate: Death of parent, Drug abuse, Genocide, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Police brutality, Violence, Blood, Confinement, Drug use, Medical content, and Torture