Ayama
Enthusiast
I feel I must preface this by stating for the record that, as a rule, I am not the greatest fan of the YA Dystopian genre as a whole. However, within that genre, I do believe Suzanne Collins to be an undisputed master.
When I first heard of the existence of this prequel, I'll admit I was not at all enthused- an entire installment centered around arguably the most unlikeable character in a franchise already, to my mind, filled with unlikeable characters? I read it because I'm a completionist as a matter of principle and now, 517 pages later, I feel like I see the brilliance in the choice.
What I feel makes Collins a particularly gifted writer (again, despite my avowed dislike of the genre) is precisely that her characters aren't all that likeable. They're flawed, certainly, but not so much in a 'I must make sure there are flaws so there's no Mary Sue/Gary Stu syndrome happening'. They are flawed in a deeply realistic, relatable way, that shows us that 'heroes' are people just like us who aren't 'all good', and villains are also people just like us who aren't 'all bad'.
As writers, we often talk about the need to make our villainous characters in particular more than just dimensionless sock-puppets; the need to give them depth, and to humanize them even while not, at the same time, condoning their choices or the actions they might take. And upon reading this book, I feel that is what Collins has given us: a character who is, undeniably, a villain, and yet just as undeniably relatable and human.
I feel the purpose of the book is to make you uncomfortable (hence the deliberate choice to write the entire thing from the perspective of the antagonist of the main trilogy)- to make you feel for and relate to this character and then, when he does something reprehensible, question your own feelings about it, and question whether you might have done the same in his place.
In this way, through this book (as well as the main trilogy), I feel the author is trying to make us question our tendencies to view things through a binary, black-and-white prism, with people being either 'all good' or 'all bad'- trying to force us to stare into that uncomfortable in-between; the grey area where all non-fictional people exist.
One particularly masterful aspect of the book, I feel, is that even as I found myself relating to the protagonist, I found myself judging his Tribute for her naive feelings towards him. I also found myself matching his irritation with the character who, by all common standards, is one of the sole consistent voices of compassion and decency throughout the story, reinforcing the relatability of the fact that so many of our moral convictions we can afford to have simply because we have not been placed in a situation that forces us to test them in any way, or weigh them against such things as our desires or our survival, such as in the dystopian world the books are set in or, indeed, the microcosm of the Games themselves.
The book (and its well-executed and faithful movie adaptation) does a remarkable job of painting the nuanced origin story of a villain, taking us along for the ride through Snow's evolution and the various events and choices that shaped him into the villain we encountered fully-formed in the first Hunger Games book. We see clearly his struggles and his weaknesses, and how events change him even as he stays true to who he is and what he values at his core. The author just as clearly paints a picture of the blinkered blindspots of the indoctrinated young but, even as Snow's worldview expands, we see the deliberate decisions he makes- both for himself and on how he chooses to view the world, with the entire progression rather masterfully executed.
While this book has not, by any means, magically converted me into a sudden rabid fan of YA dystopias, it has made me hungry for more books that dare to explore how villains become villains and how, in a very real sense, they are also us so, if anyone has any good recommendations for me on that subject, I will gladly take a look!
Thank you for reading~
When I first heard of the existence of this prequel, I'll admit I was not at all enthused- an entire installment centered around arguably the most unlikeable character in a franchise already, to my mind, filled with unlikeable characters? I read it because I'm a completionist as a matter of principle and now, 517 pages later, I feel like I see the brilliance in the choice.
What I feel makes Collins a particularly gifted writer (again, despite my avowed dislike of the genre) is precisely that her characters aren't all that likeable. They're flawed, certainly, but not so much in a 'I must make sure there are flaws so there's no Mary Sue/Gary Stu syndrome happening'. They are flawed in a deeply realistic, relatable way, that shows us that 'heroes' are people just like us who aren't 'all good', and villains are also people just like us who aren't 'all bad'.
As writers, we often talk about the need to make our villainous characters in particular more than just dimensionless sock-puppets; the need to give them depth, and to humanize them even while not, at the same time, condoning their choices or the actions they might take. And upon reading this book, I feel that is what Collins has given us: a character who is, undeniably, a villain, and yet just as undeniably relatable and human.
I feel the purpose of the book is to make you uncomfortable (hence the deliberate choice to write the entire thing from the perspective of the antagonist of the main trilogy)- to make you feel for and relate to this character and then, when he does something reprehensible, question your own feelings about it, and question whether you might have done the same in his place.
In this way, through this book (as well as the main trilogy), I feel the author is trying to make us question our tendencies to view things through a binary, black-and-white prism, with people being either 'all good' or 'all bad'- trying to force us to stare into that uncomfortable in-between; the grey area where all non-fictional people exist.
One particularly masterful aspect of the book, I feel, is that even as I found myself relating to the protagonist, I found myself judging his Tribute for her naive feelings towards him. I also found myself matching his irritation with the character who, by all common standards, is one of the sole consistent voices of compassion and decency throughout the story, reinforcing the relatability of the fact that so many of our moral convictions we can afford to have simply because we have not been placed in a situation that forces us to test them in any way, or weigh them against such things as our desires or our survival, such as in the dystopian world the books are set in or, indeed, the microcosm of the Games themselves.
The book (and its well-executed and faithful movie adaptation) does a remarkable job of painting the nuanced origin story of a villain, taking us along for the ride through Snow's evolution and the various events and choices that shaped him into the villain we encountered fully-formed in the first Hunger Games book. We see clearly his struggles and his weaknesses, and how events change him even as he stays true to who he is and what he values at his core. The author just as clearly paints a picture of the blinkered blindspots of the indoctrinated young but, even as Snow's worldview expands, we see the deliberate decisions he makes- both for himself and on how he chooses to view the world, with the entire progression rather masterfully executed.
While this book has not, by any means, magically converted me into a sudden rabid fan of YA dystopias, it has made me hungry for more books that dare to explore how villains become villains and how, in a very real sense, they are also us so, if anyone has any good recommendations for me on that subject, I will gladly take a look!
Thank you for reading~
