The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Suzanne Collins, 2020
Science fiction Young adultFantasyContemporary fiction
Before he was President Snow, he was a boy with nothing but ambition and a song. A slow-burning, uneasy read that watches ambition sharpen into something colder, with a satirical edge and a steady undercurrent of dread.
Feels like dread and curiosity. About ambition and power.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy YA science fiction that takes a future tyrant seriously and want to see how privilege and ambition shape him. The narrator's cold calculation can make the book grim, and the satirical bite keeps the dread close.
Why read it
It gives you the origin story of a familiar villain without easy excuses, and asks how charm, need and power can curdle into cruelty.
A page from the book
What a pot of cabbage can make a person promise.
Coriolanus released the fistful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again. Suzanne Collins.Coriolanus shares his name with Shakespeare's tragic Roman general, a proud man who betrays his city.
Books that feel like this
More by Suzanne Collins
Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins, 2008
In a dystopian America, survival means a dangerous dance between rebellion and the crushing power of a totalitarian Capitol.
Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins, 2010
The final Hunger Games volume: the girl who survived the state's televised death match is now the face of a war she never wanted to lead.
Sunrise on the Reaping
Suzanne Collins, 2025
Before he was District 12's ruined victor, Haymitch Abernathy was a boy with a girl, a family, and a reaping. The 50th Hunger Games, from the inside.
Where to get it
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Questions readers ask
- Is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy YA science fiction that takes a future tyrant seriously and want to see how privilege and ambition shape him. The narrator's cold calculation can make the book grim, and the satirical bite keeps the dread close.
- What is The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes like?
- A slow-burning, uneasy read that watches ambition sharpen into something colder, with a satirical edge and a steady undercurrent of dread. Feels like dread and curiosity. About ambition and power.
- What should I read after The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes?
- If you liked The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, try Yellowface (R.F. Kuang), The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Stieg Larsson) and The God of the Woods (Liz Moore).
A taste of the feed
The particular hell of watching everyone else succeed while you're still writing.
Every writer I know feels this way about someone else. Writing is such a solitary activity. You have no assurance that what you’re creating has any value, and any indication that you’re behind in the rat race sends you spiraling into the pits of despair. Keep your eyes on your own paper, they say. But that’s hard to do when everyone else’s papers are flapping constantly in your face.
Yellowface · R.F. Kuang
What a wall of forty-three pressed flowers can tell you that the police never could.
After putting down the telephone the eighty-two-year-old birthday boy sat for a long time looking at the pretty but meaningless flower whose name he did not yet know. Then he looked up at the wall above his desk. There hung forty-three pressed flowers in their frames. Four rows of ten, and one at the bottom with four. In the top row one was missing from the ninth slot. Desert Snow would be number forty-four.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo · Stieg Larsson
The particular fury of someone who has never been held accountable.
Rich people, thought Judy—she thought this then, and she thinks it now—generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs.
The God of the Woods · Liz Moore
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