1.5 stars

I went into this cautiously optimistic because although I was not pleased that we were following Snow... I thought Suzanne wouldn't do us dirty like that right? WRONG. She absolutely did.

My biggest complaint with this story is simply that it didn't need to happen. I didn't care. I didn't want to know any of the information I was told in this story. Snow's backstory does not make him more interesting or compelling. In fact, it makes him less so.

The story forces you to follow this character whose ending you already know. Even with that, he has no character arc. He doesn't really change throughout the story. So you are forced to read about him being awful but not realizing he's awful for 500 pages. And while I don't think the story romanticizes him in any way, you still are forced to suffer through it. Also, the games themselves are more brutal because the Capitol has yet to figure out how to make them into the spectacle that they are in the trilogy, and I just didn't need to see that brutality in fiction when I have to see it in real life in 2020.

AND HE HAS A ROMANCE! puuuuuke! A romance with a character who has very little agency and who he makes his own personal manic pixie dream girl. She would have been far more interesting to follow as a protagonist. Actually, a number of the side characters would have made much better protagonists for this story. ANY NUMBER of other stories from this world would have made a better story!

The extra .5 I gave this book was that it's not horribly written and there are a few "easter eggs" for things in the original trilogy, how things got to be the way they are, etc. But I still don't care about those things and could have done without learning them.

WHY WAS THIS WRITTEN?!?

Anyway, I have a vlog of my reading experience coming up so you can see my immediate reactions.