Either of these books could count for the Justice square, but I’m putting Ballad on “Justice,” and Sunrise on “And,” because it’s the second of the prequels.
I didn’t read these books when they were first released because The Hunger Games was the perfect trilogy, and it shattered me so hard I didn’t want to go back into that world. Especially after 2016 and….*gestures broadly at everything*
One of my co-workers, however, insisted that I really needed to read them. If you’re a librarian, and another librarian tells you to read something, you listen. Especially if they are a youth services librarian. They will never steer you wrong.
Both are just as devastating as the original trilogy. Moreso, even, because they show how Katniss’s story, harrowing as it was, was just a drop in the bucket of the ocean of generational trauma that Panem is drowning in. Every last person in this fictional universe needs therapy, Coriolanus Snow in particular.
Snow is why I was especially resistant to cracking open Ballad. I generally do not like books where we’re called upon to understand how the villain became the villain, usually because the author is trying to excuse said villain’s behavior. I should have known better; what Collins has done here has EXPLAINED all the forces that created Snow without letting him off the hook for his crimes. And I couldn’t look away.
It’s pretty apparent that Snow only cares about Lucy Gray as a means to glory, albeit a pretty one. We know this because when things go wrong, and he loses her, he — checks notes — SPENDS THE REST OF HIS LIFE TAKING IT OUT ON THE ENTIRE CITIZENRY OF DISTRICT 12. Yes, things are bad already in Panem, but they get worse because a traumatized teenage boy without proper social-emotional skills doesn’t get what he wants and never gets over it.
If that sounds like an exaggeration, please allow me to present Sunrise, in which poor Haymitch Abernathy gets caught up in the Hunger Games machine and loses everything, despite the fact that he wins. And why does he lose everything? Because our friend Snow simply cannot allow him to keep what he himself was not allowed to have: love, a functional family, a happy future. It isn’t enough that Haymitch gets traumatized throughout the games; his defiant spark has to be completely snuffed out.
Sunrise was the harder book to read. In both cases, we know who the protagonist is going to grow up to be. But while Snow made choices, Haymitch had choices inflicted upon him. Much like Katniss later on, Haymitch is an unlucky victim of the draw who gets sucked into the Snow show and is broken to pieces on its wheels. Knowing it’s going to end badly for him meant that it took me a long time to finish it, because my heart could only stand so much at a time.
While the main series is a reflection of how societies spiral out of control, and how individuals can resist them, the prequels serve a different function. Here we see how the downward spiral of a single individual can lead to the downward spiral of an entire society. It’s a deadly ourobouros: systems harm people, who, if unhealed, feed their poison right back into the system, taking down more individuals. Even if you already knew that on an intellectual level, it’s different watching one person stumble through the system and experience it firsthand.
Not all stories are meant to be pleasant. Some are supposed to prick our consciences. Consider me pricked. Yeesh.
