The main characters in this are Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird. Coriolanus, of course, lives in the Capitol just a couple years after the war between the Capital and the Districts ended. His family fortune is quickly going down the drain but he tries his best to be a straight A student at the Academy he attends; he attempts to make it look like his resources to food and other necessities aren't constantly dwindling. An opportunity arises for Coriolanus to get into University for free and make a name for himself instead of living in his father's shadow: The Hunger Games. He's tasked with mentoring the girl tribute from District 12: the eccentric Lucy Gray Baird. From the beginning, she's already noticeable from her colorful dress and make up, something so out of place from the district that's covered in coal dust. Lucy Gray and Coriolanus end up winning the 10th annual Hunger Games, but Coriolanus's excitement is short lived, he was found to be cheating to rig the odds into Lucy Gray's favor. Coriolanus is sent off to be a Peacekeeper, essentially a member of the national guard, for District 12. While there, he finds Lucy Gray and the two fall evermore in love. But just as Coriolanus is seeing a way out of his dead-end job as a Peacekeeper, he's on the verge of being found out of a crime that'll send him to prison. He decides to run away with Lucy Gray into the expansive forest north of District 12. But the ending has such a quick turn around, something so surprising yet it makes complete sense (a theory I'll talk more about later). Coriolanus, through a stroke of luck and quick thinking on his part, is whisked back off to the Capitol to attend classes at the University. His family's financial situation goes from dire to flourishing overnight, and in the very end, we see Coriolanus poison his first victim, something he was known for in the original trilogy. He turns into the snake that is President Snow, a liar, a cheater, and someone who's not above killing those who cross him.
One of the first things I want to touch on is the biggest aspect of this book: the love story. Although reading about two young people falling in love and making all these plans for their future together is very sweet to read, I think this love story was really realistic -which I know is a bit ironic for a dystopian fiction novel. Lucy Gray is 16 I believe, and Coriolanus is 18, these are both really young people, mere teenagers, and most relationships don't work out at that age. I was in a relationship at that age too, my high school relationship started a lot like Coriolanus's and Lucy Gray's: a relationship of convenience. Two young people just happen to be in the same place at the same time and in, relatively, the same situation, and get together because of it. Lucy Gray always hated Coriolanus's world of the Capitol and we see later in the book how Coriolanus hated Lucy Gray's world of District 12. Because they were from these completely different places, their ideals also diverged in very important aspects. Like the importance of some entity having "control." Coriolanus hated being outside in the heat, he hated mockingjays and was eventually getting tired of the endless music. Endless music is Lucy Gray's entire existence; I think the longevity of this relationship was in question from the beginning and the chances of it working out sans snake venom (I'll explain soon) were pretty slim.
In the last couple of pages, Coriolanus finds the weapon he used earlier to murder an important figure in District 12, the only thing tying him to a life away from the Capitol. He carries it around while looking for Lucy Gray who went to go find and pick katniss (ironic). At the start of him searching for Lucy Gray, he just wants to talk to her. He still says here that he loves her but he wants a different life from foraging around in the woods. He finds the orange scarf he gave her resting along some briars and as he reaches out to grab it, a snake bites him. Although the snake is revealed to not be poisonous later, it immediately alters his mental state. He starts shooting wildly, hunting Lucy Gray down, she is the only one left alive who knows that he's a murderer and he can't risk trusting her with that information. He starts getting dizzy, his arm swells, he throws up, and it's never fully confirmed if Lucy Gray is dead or not, but as Coriolanus leaves the woods, the gun is at the bottom of a lake outside District 12 and Lucy Gray is missing, which is good enough for him. After this Coriolanus becomes a completely different person, he's cocky and and devious. He doesn't care for the people in his life who he once loved anymore. He's completely different.
My theory is this: the snake that bit Coriolanus is related to the snakes Dr. Gaul created and threw into the arena. I think some of them were brough to District 12 by Dr. Kay, who we know works in Dr. Gaul's lab. Dr. Kay was sent to District 12 to do research on the jabberjays and mockingjays, I think while there, she released some genetically engineered snakes out into the wild to breed with snakes that already live around the woods of District 12. We also know that those snakes have the possibility to change not only your personality but you physical body as well because of what happened early in the book to Clemensia. Clemensia was always this very sweet girl until the snakes bit her. -The key point here though is that Clemensia was able to get treatment mere seconds after being bitten. Although her body and mind suffered, she did start to heal back into the sweet girl she once was after a couple weeks of being very crass and rude. Coriolanus didn't get that treatment. Hours after he had been bitten, we he eventually made it to the clinic at the barracks in District 12, the nurse didn't do anything to treat his wound other than bandage it. Because of what the bite looked like, she determined that the snake was non-venomous and Coriolanus was just dizzy and throwing up because of nerves. But what nerves? His whole life was falling into place again, he was on the verge of erasing his murder tracks, why would he have been nervous? I don't think Coriolanus's sudden change was of his own volition; his callousness and rudeness before the snake bite was just him being a product of his environment, it was a form of self preservation.
Another theory related to this is something I've seen floating around: Lucy Gray ends up being President Coin in the later books. We know from the original trilogy that District 13 is within walking distance from District 12. By "walking distance" I mean that Gale lead a group a people there within just two days I believe. But that group of people consisted of many young, elderly and injured people who walked through a dense forest and, at the later parts of the journey, were also hungry and thirsty. I think Lucy Gray was bitten by the same snake Coriolanus was bitten by; she has an affinity for snakes and probably thought that this one was harmless because it looked harmless despite being a hybrid. After getting bitten, she probably ran away from him and found herself in District 13. Katniss doesn't like President Coin, she's very cold and emotionless, she also hates parties and music from what I remember, which is the exact opposite of Lucy Gray! It also might explain why President Coin was no better than President Snow in the end, wanting to start her own Hunger Games on the Capitol's children.
Something that was including in this book that I didn't see in the original trilogy was the mention of queer characters. I think Suzanne Collins did a great job with how she presented them. I want to preface this paragraph by saying that I'm a gay woman myself, so of this comes off a bit judgmental, I have skin in the game here! In some books or pieces of media, I hear of gay or queer character and how they just get thrown in. Like their queerness doesn't seem to add to their personality in any way, it's just kind of there. Having a different identity can lead to you down a different path in life, you'll hang around different people and have connections in different places. The two queer characters in Songbirds and Snakes are Pluribus and Barb Azure. Pluribus is an old friend of the Snow's, he owns his own nightclub and sometimes talks about his late husband. Barb Azure is part of the Covey, she's the bass player, and it's mentioned that she started dating a girl in District 12 late into the book. I think both of these character's queerness "make sense." An older gay man owning a nightclub and a young lesbian being a band's bass player is so translatable into our reality.
I liked how similar Katniss's and Coriolanus's stories of their youth are. There's a though-line of the Hunger Games completely altering their lives but also bringing them a great romance. Both of their careers and status were started and defined by winning the Hunger Games, but with that, they had to deal with growing up way too fast and dealing with losing people close to them. A rare theme in literature, that I think The Hunger Games and Songbirds and Snakes captures so well is the idea of constantly being watched. In Katniss's case, from the moment she volunteered in the reaping until the very end of the book when she's grown up and has kids, there's always cameras or someone monitoring her every move. Coriolanus acts like he's still this rich young man and "keeps up appearances" that way. They are both tasked with performing for people, even in their private lives, and it takes a toll on them mentally. -Katniss with her running away and hiding and Coriolanus with his paranoia.
Although I did enjoy the connections between Katniss and Coriolanus, sometimes it was a little too much. I don't know how else to describe this other than "fan fiction-y." The first example being the hanging tree song, the song that Katniss's dad used to sing and eventually the song that Katniss became known for. The creation and meaning of this song was such a huge plot point in Songbirds and Snakes. The meaning behind the lyrics was thoroughly explained and I think it was a way to connect Katniss to the Covey, maybe even genetically if I'm theorizing, but it was strange how much time was focused on that. Another part of this is that Lucy Gray wrote the song, she had the ability to tell the truth about Coriolanus and be his undoing. The song later became what rebels would sing while destroying resources for the Capital. I suppose it acted as a sort of warning to Coriolanus in his later years; his "undoing" was coming back to get him. But still, it felt like this connection was too stretched out. Also Coriolanus's immediate hate of mockingjays was very suspect. A little too much foreshadowing to make it seem realistic.
Another aspect I didn't like about this book is entirely personal and kind of silly. The relationship between the children in the Covey is very odd and something I like to call "The Boxcar Children-effect." The Boxcar Children is this endlessly long series of books, the first one was published almost a century ago. They're books for kids, and like every other eight year old, I read these too but was never a fan because even then I found it to be ridiculously unrealistic. The summary of the first book is pretty simple: four kids lose their parents and housing and have to steal food and live in an old train boxcar for a while to survive. Eventually the very rich mayor of the town (I think) realizes that he's their grandpa, so he adopts them. The rest of the books are them living a very comfortable life but having adventures nonetheless. The aspect of this that I don't like is that their sibling dynamic and emotions about the situation they're in is entirely unbelievable. All the boxcar children are young kids, yet they never fight with one another, they're always overly nice to each other and never seem to panic or be stressed out about the situation they're in. I have three younger siblings myself, if we were in the boxcar children's situation, our story would look very different. The Covey kids are overly nice and protective of each other and just always so willing to sing and make music. -Which I find very hard to translate into reality, this is not an accurate representation of siblings!
A "fan fiction-y" aspect that I did like was that a lot of the Capital's mentors for the games, and Capiral characters in general, had recognizable last names. It shows, much like in real life, that these rich kids are able to make connections that trickle down for generations, insuring that their family will just get richer.
Even though this book is fiction and written by a woman, how Coriolanus talks and thinks for most of the book, it makes me hopeful. He's very emotionally intelligent and kind; I think I tend to get all caught up in the bad realities of the world that I'm bombarded with everyday. -Men doing horrible things to women, to society in general, the rise of the "manosphere" and patriarchal ideas that just ruin everybody's lives and make them unhappy; it's nice to see a young man, like Coriolanus Snow, be able to think about things very clearly and have such normal morals. I'd like to believe that this is how most young men are, it's definitely how most young men should be. This book is a love story, having emotional intelligence and good morals makes you easy to love.
I think this book gives a very real looking into what people are willing to do to keep living; something I want to touch on lastly are the implications that Tigris and Lucy Gray have both been forced into prostitution because of their situations. Coriolanus doesn't seem to pick up on this, or it's just too much for him to handle that he blocks it out of his mind. I think Songbirds and Snakes does a good job about implying it without giving it the wrong perspective. It's from the perspective of the woman/girl who has no other choice than to sell their body, they're clearly troubled by it but it also gives this sense of "this is just what I need to live through to survive." It's of course very sad, but I really like how the focus isn't on their body or sexualizing them in any way, the focus is on them as a person doing their best to provide and make ends meet.
In conclusion, wow! this was a long one! There's a lot to say about this book because it has so much history but it's great on its own too. I really enjoyed reading this and I'll probably watch the movie soon. That's all, thank you for reading!
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