The best-selling prequel to The Hunger Games, The Ballard of Songbirds and Snakes, is soon to be a major feature film releasing in 2023. Suzanne Collins does a wonderful job of creating these 2 characters with very different characteristics and talents. Collins' writing is characterized by its strong female protagonists, intricate world-building, and exploration of themes such as social injustice and the nature of power.

She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard. Collins' writing style is engaging and descriptive, allowing readers to vividly imagine the world of Panem and the horrors of the Hunger Games. I only compare them because they both occupy that meta-genre of light, compulsive reads that others may better know as Summer Reading.If the reader was reading for the plot, they didn't notice or care for these, and the only question left is "who does Katniss end up with in the end?

And while I was talking, the idea of actually losing Peeta hit me again and I realized how much I don't want him to die. In the first person point of view dominating the books we have no chance of actually getting to know the other characters, not even though the Mockingjay's eyes - the whole world is Katniss, Katniss, Katniss. The romantic subplot was handled with the subtlety of mouldy porridge and the same level of emotional range.Set 64 years before the events of The Hunger Games, the prequel follows the story of a young Coriolanus Snow, who later becomes the main antagonist of the original trilogy.