When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

We all know about the District uprisings that finally overthrew the Capital and freed Panem of the horrors of the Hunger Games… but 25 years earlier, a tribute named Haymitch Abernathy did his best to break the Games. He failed… but as author Suzanne Collins shows us in Sunrise on the Reaping, his story is worth telling.

I was skeptical, to be honest. Do we need another Hunger Games book? About Haymitch, of all people? When we meet Haymitch in the very first book in the series, he’s the District 12 drunkard, a pathetic former victor of the Hunger Games who’s lived alone in his Victor’s Village house all these years, failing each year to keep to keep any of the tributes he mentors alive, and doing his best to drink himself to death.

Eventually, he gets his act together enough to actually be of use to Katniss and Peeta, and later plays a role in the rebellion… but that’s all later. How did Haymitch, seemingly so pathetic when we meet him, manage to win his Hunger Games in the first place?

We never, none of us, had any choices.

In Sunrise on the Reaping, we find out. At age 16, Haymitch works hard to support his widowed mother and younger brother by doing odd jobs for the local bootlegger. He’s strong, devoted to his family, and madly in love with his Covey girlfriend, Lenore Dove. His birthday is never a happy one, as it coincides with the day of the reaping, and this year’s reaping promises to be especially bad: It’s the 50th Hunger Games, the Quarter Quell, and to mark the significant anniversary, the reaping will select not two tributes per District, but four. Haymitch knows he has a high chance of being selected, but initially he appears to have been spared — until an unpredictable event at the reaping forces him into the games anyway.

Haymitch knows he’s doomed. Only one person from District 12 has ever won the Hunger Games, although no one actually knows who this was — all records have disappeared. (We know, of course, that this was Lucy Gray Baird, victor of the 10th Hunger Games, as depicted in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes). As Haymitch leaves his family, friends, and District, Lenore Dove asks him to do whatever he can to put an end to the Games, once and for all.

“And that’s part of our trouble. Thinking things are inevitable. Not believing change is possible.”

“I guess. But I can’t really imagine the sun not rising tomorrow.”

A crease forms between her eyebrows as she puzzles out a response. “Can you imagine it rising on a world without a reaping?”

The best outcome Haymitch had envisioned was a quick death, to spare his family the agony of watching him die in some prolonged, awful way, and then a reunion with Lenore Dove in the afterlife — but now, he’s determined to fulfill the mission she’s set for him. If he can’t survive, at least he can try his best to break everything before his death. Maybe, just maybe, he can find a way to be disruptive enough to end the Hunger Games for good.

(We know he can’t, since we know the Games continue for another 25 years… )

As we follow Haymitch from District 12 to the Capital and then into the arena, we see a young man who’s very different than the bitter, ruined adult we know from the earlier books. Haymitch is determined but realistic. He knows he has no chance against the Careers, the tributes from the wealthier districts who train all their lives for a shot at Hunger Games glory. But Haymitch is not without skills of his own, and he’s caring to a fault: As he meets the weaker, more vulnerable tributes, he takes on the role of protector, and becomes desperate to find a way to shield his band of allies for as long as possible.

Alas, as we all know, the Hunger Games only ends with death for all but one of the tributes. As the Games in Sunrise on the Reaping get underway, the violence and death toll mount at a speed that’s inevitable. Here’s where the book feels a bit weak: Sure, it’s compelling and there are bursts of intensity and action — but, while the window dressing is different from the version of the Games we saw in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, it’s still ultimately an arena full of traps, an environment designed to kill in horrific ways, and teens who can only survive by murdering one another. It’s certainly not boring… but it’s also not new.

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AMBITION WILL FUEL HIM.

COMPETITION WILL DRIVE HIM.

BUT POWER HAS ITS PRICE.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.

The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined — every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes. 

When the news first came out that a new Hunger Games book was on the way, 10 years after the release of Mockingjay, I knew I’d have to read it. And then, as the first synopses and excerpts starting coming out, I was probably as confused and nervous as all the other Hunger Games fans.

A book about President Snow? Really?

Did we really need this particular character’s backstory? And given what a horrible person he is, would a novel about his early years manage to satisfy readers or make us care?

Fortunately, Ballad (sorry, I’m just not going to keep typing out the full LONG title) exceeds expectations and shows that the talent of Suzanne Collins can make a man we all despise into a compelling lead character.

Coriolanus Snow is 18 years old when we meet him at the start of Ballad. It’s been ten years since the war ended, and he lives in his family’s luxurious home in the Capital. Or at least, it was luxurious once upon a time, when the Snow fortune was thriving and Coriolanus’s parents were still alive.

The war was brutal and cruel, and the streets of the Capital are still filled with the rubble left behind. The Snow family’s home is falling apart at the seams, and when District 13 was bombed into oblivion, ending the war, the Snow industries located there were also obliterated, leaving the once wealthy family destitute. Now, years later, Coriolanus lives in the shabby home with his elderly grandmother (referred to as the Grandma’am) and his cousin Tigris, where they subsist most days on cabbage soup.

Fortunately for Coriolanus, he’s a stellar student at the Academy, where his uniforms are provided and he’s guaranteed hot meals during the school day. He hides his poverty and hunger from everyone around him, determined to continue to portray himself and his family as upper crust, top tier, best of the bunch. After all, as he and Tigris reassure one another:

Snow lands on top.

This year, for the first time, Academy students are going to be given an exciting new assignment: Each of the top year students will be assigned as a mentor to a tribute in the Hunger Games. This is a chance for Coriolanus to shine. If he’s successful, if his tribute does well, he’s more likely to get the prizes and recognition that will get him a University scholarship. And his dreams definitely include University — the education and access will be necessary for his goal of restoring the Snow family to power, maybe all the way to the Presidency someday.

But first, he has to make sure his tribute does well. And it’s not looking so good. He’s assigned the girl tribute from District 12, the least prestigious assignment possible. And she’s an odd one — a girl dressed in poofy rainbow skirts with a beautiful voice and a magnetic presence, but clearly not a threat in any sort of way. Still, Coriolanus will have to work with what he’s given, and he begins to scheme and plan for how to push Lucy Gray Baird into the spotlight and into the public’s affection.

That’s a lot of synopsis, and there’s so much more to say, but I’ll stop here and talk about the pieces that really stood out for me in this book.

First, it’s truly fascinating to see life in the Capitol in the post-war years. In The Hunger Games trilogy, we only see the Capitol through Katniss’s eyes. It’s a cruel, spoiled place, full of pampered, shallow people, a place where other people’s suffering is entertainment for the masses.

Here in Ballad, the Capitol is a shelled, damaged city trying to rebuild and reestablish its absolute control. The black market is thriving, old families are starving and fading away, and social standing is the only possible avenue to regain what was lost.

The Hunger Games, ten years after their creation, are just one facet of the Capitol’s attempt to dominate the districts, and they’re pretty meager at that. The Games are held in a bombed-out sports arena, where the tributes are basically just dumped with a pile of weapons and left to kill one another. No high-tech tricks or elaborate sets, no cannons or anthems, not even any removal of bodies. The dead lie there until it’s all over, and it never does take very long.

What’s more, the tributes of these early Hunger Games don’t get any of the special preparation or luxury guest accommodations that Katniss experiences all those years later. They’re transported to the Capitol in cattle cars and housed at a cage at the zoo, given neither food nor water. It’s Coriolanus who draws attention to them, realizing that his tribute will benefit from having the public love her, finding ways to create interest and encouraging people to bring food to the caged tributes, who might otherwise starve to death before they ever enter the arena.

One of the truly fascinating aspects of this book is seeing the hated President Snow as a vulnerable teen. He’s not hateful when we meet him. He’s a young man who has to put on a good show while his private world falls apart, every single day. He’s driven and determined, but loves his family, and isn’t terrible at his core.

It’s his ambition that drives him forward, and he does have people he cares about. He also struggles with the morality of the Hunger Games, although as he views Panem’s actions from the perspective of a Capitol family, he has no sympathy for the rebels who caused such devastation in his home. Under the tutelage of the Academy professors, he hones his thinking on control and the social structure of Panem, and finds ways to push aside any personal disgust or moral ambivalence when it gets in the way of his goal to ensure the survival and triumph of the Snow family legacy.

Lucy Gray is a wonderful character, as is Sejanus, Coriolanus’s school friend who is decent to the core. Sejanus’s family is from District 2, but moved to the Capitol thanks to their enormous wealth — but no one lets Sejanus forget that he’s District, and he himself can’t seem to fully accept the Capitol’s approach to ruling the Districts. Sejanus’s morality is both a guidepost and an irritant to Coriolanus, and their contrasting journeys over the course of Ballad is a key part of what makes this novel so compelling.

(If I had more of an education in the classics, here’s where I’d go into the symbolism of the characters’ names… but alas, all I can do is say that looking up Coriolanus and Sejanus on Wikipedia was very interesting!)

As a side note, I know people were commenting/complaining about the lengthy title of this book. And yes, I’ve opted to just call it Ballad instead of typing it out over and over again. That said, ballads and snakes and songbirds are all significant within the book and factor strongly into certain plot points, so it’s definitely not an arbitrary title!

There’s so much more to say about Ballad, so much food for discussion, but I’ll stop going into details and just encourage you to discover it for yourself! I could not put this book down. The author does an amazing job of taking an established villain and showing us the nuances and all the shades of gray in his development. Coriolanus wasn’t always the man we know in the Hunger Games trilogy; Ballad illustrates who he once was and how he became the person he ended up.

A terrific read. Don’t miss it!