Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, by Suzanne Collins

32 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

kittygracex07's review

adventurous dark tense slow-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Toxic relationship, Violence, and Classism

Moderate: Body horror and War

Minor: Drug abuse, Gun violence, Cannibalism, Death of parent, and Medical content

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

anjaja's review

inspiring mysterious slow-paced

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

4.5

Its super slow, like one chapter is one day or less and the next chapter starts with waking up, and the book covers not just a few weeks but months. I usually enjoy faster pace, but this book was super intriguing and read almost like a prophecy for the main trilogy. 

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Content Warnings

Minor: Cannibalism, Vomit, War, Murder, Medical content, Injury/injury detail, Death of parent, Violence, and Death

yourstrulytay's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

0.5

Thanks! I hated it!

After the brilliance of THG series, I had fairly high hopes for this book. Even once I heard that the book would be centred around a young Coriolanus Snow - which, admittedly, I wasn't wholly thrilled out - I thought the premise at least sounded interesting.

Absolutely not.

I have never been so consistently bored while reading (technically, listening, because audiobooks are my BFFs right now) a book, and I have never been so annoyed by a character's inner monologue before.

I know we aren't supposed to like Snow; obviously not, considering how we met him during THG... but seriously, he was such an awful character all around. Awfully written, awfully stupid. One second, he's practically writing sonnets about Lucy Gray Baird, and the next he's whining about being stuck doing whatever task he deems beneath him. Two seconds later, he's complaining about Sajanus, after naming him as his BFF two paragraphs prior. I mean, this man is exhausting, and I listened to 16 hours of this BS... Six. Teen.

I hate DNFing, mostly because I always hold out hope that something will get better. In case you're wondering... this book did not get better. It got consistently worse as time went on; in fact, that's probably the only consistent thing about it!

So yeah, don't waste your time, I'm glad I borrowed the audiobook from a library and didn't waste money buying it because. Yeah. I hated it. So much.

(The 0.5 star is for the character of Maude Ivory who is categorically the cutest child ever and I adored her... everyone else can go home, she wins)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Drug abuse, Classism, Violence, Death, Addiction, Blood, Medical content, Forced institutionalization, Drug use, and Death of parent

Moderate: Cannibalism, War, and Suicidal thoughts

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

claudiamacpherson's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Injury/injury detail, Murder, Gun violence, War, Emotional abuse, Toxic friendship, Violence, Xenophobia, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Bullying, Suicide attempt, Medical content, Vomit, and Police brutality

emsprobablyreading's review

challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I love love love this book. A wonderful prequel to the dystopian series that defined my adolescence. Suzanne Collins has done an excellent job of giving her readers a look at how the Hunger Games from Katniss' time came to be as well as a trip inside the mind of her greatest adversary, President Snow. The callbacks to the original series are wonderfully crafted, and I especially love how Lucy Gray is both her own character and written is such a way to set up Katniss as the perfect ghost of Snow's past, come to make him pay for his sins. I could write an essay on the implications of this book, but instead I leave you with this: if what you enjoyed about the Hunger Games trilogy was the commentary on war, power, control, privilege, rebellion, and what it means to love one another, then read this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Violence, War, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/injury detail, Murder, Blood, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Gaslighting, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Slavery, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Emotional abuse, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Kidnapping, Medical trauma, Suicide, Addiction, Alcohol, Confinement, Medical content, Alcoholism, Suicide attempt, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Confinement and Vomit

zombiezami's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

5.0

Masterfully done

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Torture, Murder, Police brutality, Classism, Drug abuse, Drug use, Blood, Animal death, Gun violence, Misogyny, Alcohol, Grief, Injury/injury detail, Gaslighting, Confinement, Gore, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Child death, Death, Stalking, Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Kidnapping, Mass/school shootings, Fire/Fire injury, Suicide attempt, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Death of parent, War, Infidelity, Vomit, Dementia, and Cursing

Minor: Pregnancy and Cannibalism

classicpseudonym's review

challenging dark slow-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

3.75

as a fan of the original three hunger games books, this was a pretty well-done prequel book. readers see how coriolanus became the controlling, tyrannical leader depicted in the original series. we see his ambitions and struggles as a young adult after the war, and how mentoring the games introduces him to the ideal of control, and how without it, chaos would run rampant. chaos is represented by the hunger games, and <spoiler coriolanus experiences this uncontrolled chaos when he's briefly thrown inside the arena. overall, this book addresses the question of "what if there were no rules and nobody had control and power?" very well, and i appreciated the way this theme was incorporated into the plot. i will say that this book was quite slow-paced compared to the original series, but that wasn't a huge deal to me. what i did not appreciate was coriolanus's relationship with lucy gray. maybe it's because i'm not big on romance in books sometimes, but i felt that their relationship felt forced and could have been written to be better intertwined with the plot. it somewhat added to the plot though, and i can see why their relationship was important in terms of the story and connecting the prequel back to the original series. overall, a book worth reading, just not something i'd want to read again. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Violence

Moderate: Medical content and Injury/injury detail

Minor: Cannibalism, War, Death of parent, and Grief