I loved The Hunger Games trilogy, both the books and the movies, so I was very excited by the release of a new addition to the series. In the original books, the president of Pan Am is a wicked character called Coriolanus Snow. This book is a prequel and focusses on Coriolanus as a young man who is a mentor to a girl from the districts who is chosen to compete in The Hunger Games.
Initially, Coriolanus is a fairly well meaning and noble character, with some questionable motivations, but basically trying to do the right thing. I was trying to rack my brains and remember more from the original books to see if his character as an old man had proved to have redeeming goodness, because I really wanted him to keep hold of the goodness within him. As the book progressed, however we see how events affect him and how the less noble aspects of his character are fed.
After having only listened to The Magnus Archives on my morning runs for so long, it was glorious to get back to a real novel, and getting my next installment was great motivation for getting up at the crack of dawn and going out running! I thought the book was very thoughtful and interesting, especially for a ‘young adult’ novel. The exploration of motivation behind totalitarian regime’s was deep and challenging.
There were a lot of songs in the book, and the narrator never attempted to sing them, so it was slightly weird just having them read out as straight prose, but I guess getting a narrator who was also an accomplished singer might have been difficult (and I guess some of the songs maybe don’t actually have tunes?). I really enjoyed the book though.
Sarah Wray Writer 