Like its predecessors, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has one thing in common with the other books in the series; heavily detailed and pragmatic world-building from Collins that fans of the Hunger Games franchise know and love. The narrative connections to her other works were not only interesting, but brilliantly plotted according to existing lore. Withal, the book ushers in more or less a hundred characters you seldom care about aside from the select few. Unlike in the previous books, there is no emotional link to connect the reader to Lucy Gray like it was with Katniss. You scarcely find yourself feeling bad about the end of the other tributes in the Games.
The book doesn’t solely focus on the Games itself. The broad smorgasbord of developments that tie this story together make it one of a kind and more engrossing. It is not the typical Hunger Games story you would expect to read. First half of the book didn’t really arouse emotion in the reader and the plot meanders enough to make you second-guess the storyline. There are quite a few shaky plot points, too. It only starts to pick up at the second half of the novel in which case it begins to resemble a poorly manufactured building on the verge of ruin.
The only interesting character in the whole book might just be the egocentric Head Gamemaker, Dr. Volumnia Gaul. The mannerisms she shows throughout the book can be linked to the person that would ultimately become like her very own protégé, Coriolanus Snow, the future president that would eventually come to embrace these methods as his own.
