Hunger Games.prequel Movie

[Vennie Fireman]

Withher Hunger Games novels, Suzanne Collins harnessed a combination of twisty plots, teen romance, dystopian worldbuilding and subtle intimations of cannibalism to sell more than 100 million books around the world.

The premise was unbeatable: Authoritarian regime forces children to fight to the death on live TV; rebellion ensues. But much of the series' appeal came from the spiky charisma of protagonist Katniss Everdeen, the sharpshooting teenager who wins the games and starts a revolution while choosing between two boys who are as alike in cuteness as they are different in Weltanschauung.

So, how did he get there? Why was he laughing? What's with the blood? The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes opens on teenage Coriolanus at home, making a cabbage soup that fills "the kitchen with the smell of poverty." Once prosperous, the Snows have fallen on hard times. Coriolanus has been chosen to mentor one of the tributes for the hunger games, a charming waif named Lucy Gray, after William Wordsworth's ballad. In helping her to victory, he sees a chance at social redemption and a coveted scholarship to the university.

Inevitably, he falls for her. But the love story is tinged with self-interest from the start. At first, saving her means helping himself, but eventually, he has to choose between her and his glorious political future.

One of Collins' persistent questions in the first three books is: To what extent is character warped and corrupted by circumstances? Is anyone, to quote Corionalus' Shakespearean namesake, really "author of himself"? Characters throughout the series find themselves altered by drugs ("morphling" is the opiate of choice) and poison (tracker jacker wasp venom, which drives humans insane with fear and bloodlust), along with the more quotidian influences of poverty, deprivation and war. No one comes out of the games with clean hands. It's just about, as one of the contestants says, keeping as much of yourself intact as you can.

Readers who loved the moral ambiguity, crisp writing and ruthless pacing of the first three books might be less interested in an overworked parable about the value of Enlightenment thinking. That's not to say Collins can't or shouldn't work serious moral and political questions into her novels: It's the sheer obviousness that drags, the way that we know what the right answer is supposed to be.

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