Kelsey’s Reviews > The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes > Status Update

I read somewhere that Collins said to read her books in publication order, as the themes expand on each other. I do feel that what was more subtly hinted at in the OG trilogy is more explicit here, but I don't think that's necessarily bad for a YA series:

'...wondered if he would soon perish of natural causes. If starving to death was a natural cause . . . Was it natural if hunger had been used as a weapon?'

The Capitol continuously dehumanizing the tributes:

'Jessup . . . was a good person. He threw his body over mine to protect me . . . It wasn't even conscious. He did it reflexively. That's who he was at heart. A protector. I don't think he would've ever won the Games, because he'd have died trying to protect Lucy Gray.

'Oh, like a dog or something? . . .'

'No, not like a dog. Like a human being.'

'What happened in the arena? That's humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That's mankind in its natural state.'

ooof

this one continues to be even more messed up than the original trilogy...


spoiler:


um...so they've essentially crucified Marcus. like wtf

'I have to ask . . . If i came to it, would you kill someone?

'Maybe in self-defense.'

'It's the Hunger Games. It's all self-defense.'

uhh not snow casually mentioning there was cannibalism in the past. WTF

well damn, if you think the first books were fucked up (and they are), this is whole other level right now with the last two chapters...

'The more he treated her as something special, the more she'd become human.'