Reviews

I don't get why everyone loves Coriolanus so much in this book/in the movie. He's an incel and he's the most insane example of fragile masculinity I think I've ever read in a book. This is a pointless read imo - the original trilogy is so much better.

cjsamuel's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

aneesasona's review against another edition

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4.0

If I had read instead of listened to this, I think I would’ve had a really hard time finishing it. The writing often drags with the self-indulgence of the protagonist himself, and if had to actually sit down and force myself to continue turning page after page of Coriolanus’ self-pity and self-obsession that made him blind to even the most obvious realities around him—and they were made painfully obvious—I would probably give it two stars and weeks of seething resentment.

But it’s a good audiobook.

If you’re looking for drama or plot twists or a likable main character, definitely look elsewhere. But if you’re looking for the torturous dread of a train on track to collide with the side of a mountain, moving at a snail’s pace with no way to stop it or save the people on it—well, this is the book for you. There will be no surprises. There will be no redemption, no sudden breakthrough in the twisted logic. There will be no taking of the high road. There will only be the slow, inevitable completion of corruption of a teenaged child with PTSD, caste brainwashing, and continued trauma who has had minimal exposure to the concept of other people as human beings and is too charming for his own good. I’m not sure there’s anything at all pleasant about this book, but it feels like that’s the point.

I do wish Collins had been MORE obvious about the social contract/nature of man/theory of government concepts she was pulling from. The quotes up front—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wordsworth, Shelley—set up the book as less of a villain origin story and much more of a battle of philosophies. But then Collins gives us Coriolanus blathering on about his unchecked jealousy and views of Lucy Gray as an object to be owned (gag me @ this “romance”) and, like, a page total on this chaos/control/contract discussion. It’s almost insulting that the author takes great pains to lay all of her plot turns out but stops at surface-level inclusion of the ideas of real-world writers who shaped many of our Western governments as much as they did Panem’s. If you’re going to give your readers a prequel that is such a departure from the storytelling of the rest of its series, give us more credit and properly include us in your philosophical musings.