 The much-anticipated prequel to the Hunger Games, the ballad of songbirds and snakes, is finally here, and is it worth the hype? Hell yeah. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, just, I want to say real quick, you might notice the video and the sound is a little crisper than it normally would be. That's because I have a new camera and microphone. However, the acoustics in here aren't super great. If I talk at my normal voice and project the way I usually do, then, you know, it sounds really bad, so I will be talking a little more subdued for now, and I'm looking for a way to fix this, but if I accidentally go above that and the sound gets weird, then I just, I apologize for that. But, so the ballad of songbirds and snakes. When I first heard about this, I was pretty excited, because I thought, oh, okay, it'll be about the first rebellion where the districts tried to overthrow the capital and failed, or it'll be about the establishment of the Hunger Games, and then I heard that it would be about Coriolanus Snow, who was the villain in the other books, President Snow, and it's all about him when he's a kid, and he becomes a mentor to somebody in the 10th Hunger Games. And so, when I heard that, I was a little disappointed, but I was still excited for the book, because, you know, President Snow, a lot of people I think remember him as being a better villain than he really was, because in the books, he was decent, don't get me wrong, but he was much more of a representation of the capital as a whole than he was his own character. But people remember him more in the movies where he's played by Donald Sutherland, and not only did they give him more scenes to work with, but Donald Sutherland just dominates every second that he's on screen, and he just knocks it out of the park with that performance, so I think a lot of people give Snow more credit than he initially had. So I was a little excited, I was a little, alright, let's see his rise to power. And this book isn't even really about that. It shows the beginnings of his rise to power, don't get me wrong, but it mostly shows him as a person and how he became the tyrannical overlord of Panem. So at the beginning of this book, Coriolanus, that's the name he's referred to, and it's a weird name, and I don't like it, but whatever Coriolanus is, he's living in the capital, he's part of a formerly wealthy family. Like, his parents were killed during the rebellion, and their fortune was lost, so really, now all they have is the house, and they're just barely scraping by, but he's trying to put on the appearance that he's still wealthy, so they have to go to great lengths to do that, even though they're eating like cabbage soup and stuff every day, which is kind of neat, kind of interesting, and while it didn't exactly make me feel bad for Snow, because even when they're talking about stuff that happened during the rebellion and how awful things were in the capital sometimes and how some people were literally cannibalizing dead bodies because there was not enough food, even with that, we don't get a whole lot of information about why the districts rebelled the first time, excuse me. Rather, I'm still going off the assumption that the capital was living pretty much the same way it was during the main series, where the districts give away pretty much everything they need, except the bare minimum to survive, so that the capital can have this luxurious, opulent lifestyle, so in the end I couldn't feel that bad for them. So then, like I said, Coriolanus gets picked as a mentor for a girl from District 12, who is picked to be one of the tributes in the Hunger Games, and you would think that from there, the majority of the book would be, okay, they're training for the Hunger Games and then the games happen and he's just trying to keep her alive and then they fall in love. It's really not that hard to figure out. Well, you would be partially right. I'm not going to give away too much, but I will say that around 60% of this book is Coriolanus and Lucy meeting at the beginning and then forming a relationship, and yeah, it's not really a spoiler to say that they do become romantically involved, and then the Hunger Games take up a pretty big chunk after that. And then the last 40% is something a lot different. I'm not going to give it away. That last 40% is a lot better than the first 60, I think, because while it was neat getting to see the capital while it's still rebuilding and getting a feel for what type of person Coriolanus is as a kid, and while it's not as simple as, oh, he starts off idealistic and then becomes evil after that, or he tries to save his girlfriend and then she dies and then he becomes evil, it's a lot more complicated than that. See, he's a bit of a sociopath but not really. He just sees himself as being above a lot of other people because he comes from a prestigious family and he was used to growing up in crazy, opulent wealth. Even now that that's gone, he still feels above others. And in particular, the people from the districts, they don't just look down on them. People from the capital literally see them as subhumans that need to be controlled in order to keep them from killing themselves and others. And in fact, this book start opens off with a couple of quotes talking about the nature of power and specifically one from Thomas Hobbes that talks about how, hey, there needs to be an absolute monarch to clamp down on people, otherwise they're just going to go wild because people, that's just how people are. And while you might not agree with that, you do definitely see how Coriolanus could see the logic in it and how he could eventually come to agree with it. Now, the thing about any prequel is that the plot isn't that important and because you know more or less how it's going to end from the beginning. So what you got to do with it is either expand on the world building or expand on characters. And this book expands on characters really well. World building, we'll get to that in a minute. So characters, like I said, Snow, you get a feel for him. He's not exactly a normal person, but you feel like, okay, he's a pretty bad dude, but he has some good to him and that doesn't even go away at the end of the book or anything like that. Yeah, you do see him change and evolve and you don't exactly like him, at least I didn't, but you do find yourself rooting for him a little bit. And then there's other characters, like Lucy Gray, who is the tribute that he gets assigned to. And she, I feel, could have been a little bit better fleshed out, but you know, she's still an interesting character, I liked her. And then there's like the Dean of the Academy where Coriolanus went and at first he's just kind of the mean authority figure who serves as a minor antagonist to the hero, but trust me, he gets some development later on and he becomes a much more interesting character. And then there's like Dr. Gall who is the head of the Hunger Games at first and she's a pretty neat character, like she's a crazy person, but just seeing her effect on Coriolanus is great. And beyond that, there are way too many characters in this book. Like, I mean, you have the 24 tributes in the Hunger Games and then you have their 24 mentors and then in the last 40% they introduce a bunch of new characters, most of whom really don't get enough screen time to even really have them stick with you at all. Like, I don't even remember the names of most of them. So yeah, that was clumsy and clunky. And the thing is, this is a pretty long book. It's a little over 500 pages, so you gotta be able to cut fat wherever you can. And in fact, while I wouldn't say this book went on a lot longer than it should have, there wasn't any one subplot or anything that I felt could have been cut, but there were individual scenes and individual paragraphs that went on longer than I think they should have and so an editor probably could have cut back on those and made this whole book probably 30 pages shorter and I think that would have been a lot better. As for the world building, man, I was so let down by that because the thing is, the first three books or the main series is told from Katniss' point of view and she doesn't really know that much about the outside world or how the world got destroyed or anything like that. So it makes sense that she wouldn't comment on it that much whereas Coriolanus is super educated. He should know about stuff like that and they don't really give any information about that in this book. Like, they mention there's nothing outside of Panem as far as they know. Like, there's no people or anything. But at the same time, they mention that Panem has a navy and that there's patrols off the coast to protect them but protect them from what? There's no information given and that seems inconsistent. So there's really no extra world building here. We don't find out how the first rebellion started. We don't really find out how Panem was founded. We don't find out how the world initially got destroyed. It's just a huge, huge missed opportunity and easily the worst thing about this book. Other than that, I only have a couple of minor complaints. Like, they really are just small ones because this book, while it's not super great and it doesn't have a whole lot of action for the most part, or plot-wise, I mean it's not super great. It doesn't have a whole lot of action or twist returns or anything. The last 50 to 60 pages are absolutely phenomenal and definitely made the journey worth it. Like, the ending of this is heavy. Okay, I'm not gonna give away any more than that, but it's heavy, okay? It's not like an action climax where a whole bunch of people are getting shot and you're intense like, oh man, I hope the hero survives. It's a lot more complex than that. So yeah, definitely this book is great but there are a few minor nitpicks. For starters, I'll just let George Carlin say it. There's too many fucking songs. Yeah, the Lucy Gray is a singer and there's a lot of points where they take up like two or three pages where it's just stanzas of her singing and I just skipped over the majority of those, to be honest, because I hate reading songs because I never know what tune it's supposed to be or anything. I just know the lyrics and I can't really get into it. It's annoying, so I just, I skip over them. While Coriolanus does clearly care about Lucy, he seems to care about her more as one of the good ones from the districts, you know? In fact, I think at one point they literally do say she's better than other people from the districts because they see them as being basically subhuman but he sees her as one of the good ones basically, so yeah, that made me like him a little bit less than I probably should have. Even though, yeah, you're not supposed to like him all that much throughout this entire book, don't get me wrong. He's a villain protagonist, especially at the end, but he, still, I feel like if they had worked on that, it would have made for a more compelling character study as opposed to just, oh, he's a racist and he does bad things and again, I'm making it sound worse than it really is but it's not that big a deal but it still did bother me. Overall though, like I said, fantastic book. It's a great example of how people can, even if they don't start systems and you know if they don't accidentally go out and kill people themselves, they can contribute to systems and forms of governments and economics and all that which do hurt other people and do kill them and they don't try and change things because, well, they're just looking out for themselves and they don't want to rock the boat and quite frankly the current system benefits them. So seeing all of that in this is absolutely phenomenal and it gives a great insight into not only President Snow's mind but the mind of most of the capital's leaders, I think, around the time of the main series and it really shows that even though, yeah, they made a lot of stupid decisions, this is how they came to those decisions and it even gives some pretty logical explanations for why they made the Hunger Games into the big spectacle that they were or, well, even why they made the games in the first place. I mean, granted, that's still kind of stupid and it's not the best way to keep your population in line, I don't think, but they explain it well enough that I'm willing to accept it and then when they show about how not only Snow but some other people really came along and made it into this big spectacle that it was in the main series, we see how, okay, yeah, that's how that happened. So if you're a fan of the Hunger Games at all, then definitely read this book. It's pretty fantastic. Thanks a bunch to all my patrons whose names are on the screen here. They helped me, you know, buy new equipment and stuff. Thanks especially to the $10 up patrons, Oppo Savalainen, Brother Santotys, Christopher Hawkins, Christopher Quinten, Emily Miller, Joel Joseph Pendergraft, Madison Lewis Bennett, Taylor Briggs, Tobacco Crow, Ann Vaivictus, and all the other names, you know, all of you are cool and actually my copy of the book came with this neat little sticker, so that's nice. And yeah, check out the Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes if you're into that at all, and I will see you next time. Bye.