I don’t know why I didn’t immediately buy and read this book when it came out in 2020, being a huge fan of the Hunger Games series, but I finally got around to it. After seeing the recently dropped trailer for the upcoming movie I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait. That, and I am very much someone who likes to read the book before seeing the movie.
The story takes place as the tenth Hunger Games are about to begin. The war is still fairly fresh in everyone’s minds and the country as a whole is still recovering, including the Capitol. It has been suggested that the games need some livening up in order to get more people interested in watching them, but also, the message of the meaning of the games needs to be made more prominent. Our main character is Coriolanus Snow, the country’s future president, as an eighteen year old student who has been picked along with twenty three of his classmates to be the first ever mentors for the district children. The mentorship is part experiment, for the position of mentors in the games, and part opportunity, in order for the gamemakers to learn how to make the event more engaging for viewers.
I don’t want to say too much more because it would give too much away. But I will say that as the story progresses you see how Snow started to become the man you already know as the feared and cruel president of Panem. The end leaves me wanting more. One, because the final scene with Snow and his tribute ended too abruptly, in my opinion, even though I recognize that the ending correlates with his tributes ‘song’. And secondly, I want to know more about the things Snow did to acquire the huge amount of power he attains in the future, besides him having an incredibly strong ally who has taken in Snow as her protege. I do hope that the author considers writing another Snow book, or as I read in a bunch of comments recently, a book about young Haymitch and his Hunger Games.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 