Description
There was a time when the Snow family was among the wealthiest and most powerful in the Capitol of Panem... before the rebellion that devastated
the Districts and the Capitol alike. Now, like the Capitol itself, the Snows have little but echoes of their former grandeur. Coriolanus Snow, his
cousin Tigress, and his grandmother are all that remain of the Snows, but the young man is determined to restore their old fortunes. His late father
always used to say "snow lands on top", after all. But the coffers are nearly empty, the illusion of wealth harder and harder to maintain among
society peers, and as he nears the end of his days at the Academy he'll need a miracle to afford to attend higher education and secure a future for
himself and his family. Fortunately, an opportunity has been dropped into his lap, courtesy of the tenth annual Hunger Games.
The Games - brutal annual contests where children from each of the twelve remaining Districts are forced to fight to the death in the Capitol as
punishment for their parents' rebellion - have been waning in popularity as the war fades into the past. Even in the Capitol, many don't bother
tuning in to watch two dozen half-starved kids, whom they barely see as human anyway, hack away at each other in a dusty arena. To try to make the
Games more competitive and interesting to the viewing audience, this year the Gamemasters are assigning each District "tribute" a Capitol mentor,
drawn from the Academy, to help prepare them for pre-Game interviews and strategize. Whoever mentors a victor is assured entry in the University.
Coriolanus is initially dismayed when he is saddled with the girl from District 12 - a backwater of half-starved coal miners, who usually don't
last long in the arena - but Lucy Gray Baird is not at all what he imagined. Feisty and colorful and full of tricks, she just might be the
underdog contestant to beat the Games and win the Snows their old glory back, and more besides... or she just might be the ruin of him and his
dreams.
Review
I read and enjoyed the original trilogy (and watched and enjoyed the movies), but I hesitated a long while before trying this prequel.
President Snow was an interesting but dark and devious antagonist, and I'm rather tired of the villain worship that seems to be so popular
lately: turning evil people who do evil things into heroes (even though most of the best baddies think of themselves as the heroes of their own
stories). But, as it turns out, this is not a redemption arc or a retcon that turns Coriolanus Snow into a "misunderstood" man, but an origin
story that proves just how many chances at redemption or a less-horrific path he ignored to embrace his ultimate destiny.
From the start, there is something fundamentally flawed in Snow, a self-centered worldview that is blind to empathy or affection save how it
serves him and his immediate family, though like many sociopaths he has learned "protective coloring" to emulate such emotions and manipulate
them for his own goals. The reader sees how he is puzzled and amused by, and often disdainful of, such pointless distractions as friendship,
even as he recognizes that he needs to fake it to get by. How much of this he was born with and how much was a result of wartime trauma, as his
childhood was one of extreme devastation and loss and the drawn-out horrors of a city under seige during the failed rebellion (whose impact is
still visible daily around a Capitol that still struggles to rebuild a decade after victory), is unclear, but the damage runs deep, for all
that he doesn't see it; if one is born colorblind, after all, what does the word "green" even mean? His flawed viewpoint means the reader sees
more than he does in the actions and motivations of those around him, as (most) everyone projects onto him emotions that he only dimly feels,
if he feels them at all... and when he does feel them, even his emotions are warped by the cracked lens through which he views the world.
Still, even he feels a certain level of revulsion for the Games and the Gamesmasters, particularly the sadistic geneticist Doctor Gaul, whose
lab is full of abominations that turn even Snow's stomach. The fact that she seems to have taken a personal interest in Snow's education
bodes ill for his future and hints that the poison runs deeper than one boy, but to the roots of an entire society warped by war and trauma
until it actively rejects healing and can only think to seek new and more depraved ways to inflict pain. Still, little as Snow cares for the
Games, the Masters, or other aspects of what he's asked to do, he recognizes this as his only chance to achieve his ambitions, so he wades
in with a will, brushing off any vestigial bristling of a conscience. Until, that is, he has his first encounter with Lucy Gray Baird.
She is not actually a resident of District 12; she is actually of the "Covey", a pre-war nomadic people who traveled Panem freely, singing
and entertaining, only to be trapped after the war when passage between Districts was forbidden. District folk don't embrace the Covey, even
trapped as they are with them and ground under the same boot heel, nor do Covey embrace the District, and both loathe the Capitol and all it
stands for, even as the Capitol sees all things beyond their borders as little more than animals. She was sent as tribute by a mayor who saw
a chance to fulfill a personal grudge (and spare one of his own people), but proves early on she can be as quick on her feet and
cold-blooded as Snow, even faced with near-certain death in the Games, determined to go out on her own terms and bowing to none. Snow's
ambitions drive him above and beyond what his fellow mentors attempt in connecting with their District tributes, and one can see how Lucy
takes his interest the wrong way. As for Snow, he starts feeling something that might, but for his fundamental flaws, be love... in another
life, where he was capable of that emotion as it's generally meant. Even if he were able to truly feel for her what she grows to feel for
him, the odds against them are immense, but they're both at that age where "impossible" just seems like it'll take a little longer to become
inevitable. Together, they turn out to be a formidable team... but things do not work out as Snow had hoped. Even from a place of fallen
grace, he still plots for a return to glory - but can that glory, that desire for order and control and prestige, ever stretch enough to
encompass a veritable force of nature like Lucy Gray Baird? Even without knowing of the later trilogy, there is tragedy written all over
this tale almost from the start.
Though I never truly empathized with Snow (nor was I supposed to), he made for a compelling and interesting character. In addition to
showing the origins of Panem's future president, the book also explores the pivotal moments when the Hunger Games stopped even pretending to
be about "justice" or vengeance for the war and began their transformation into the sickening spectacle that awaited Katniss Everdeen 64
years later. So much hinges on which view of humanity one's leaders embrace, whether they see people as generally good and decent or as
inherently savage monsters who need to be collared and broken for the sake of social harmony, with no apparent room for overlap. When people
incapable of understanding empathy are in charge, the latter is not only inevitable, but ensured as each generation grooms the next in their
own image. It nearly earned another half-star in the ratings, barely held back by an occasional sense of wallowing in its own depravities
(depravities that are all too recognizable in our own world) and stretching out Snow's journey.
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