Баллада о певчих птицах и змеях добавляет новое измерение к одной ноте подлости президента Голодных игр Сноу

Translating…

Readers of Suzanne Collins’ hit younger-adult trilogy,The Hunger Video games, will be aware Coriolanus Snow because the tyrannical president of Panem and tormentor of rise up protagonist Katniss Everdeen. Collins’highly anticipated unique prequel,The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, is right here to flesh out the one-screen villain.

Sixty-four years earlier than Katniss enters the sphere, Coriolanus—Coryo to a assign few—is 18 years old-long-established, ambitious to the bone and secretly broke. He’s a pupil on the Capitol Academy, the college the assign the privileged kids of town exhaust their days making ready for faculty and prestigious careers within the fully share of the nation with resources and different. Nonetheless theFirst Riot, the civil war that used to be fought between the Capitol and the districts 10 years prior, has left the as soon as-prosperous Snows virtually destitute and combating to preserve up appearances. His father died a hero within the war and his mother earlier than, so it’s excellent Coriolanus, cousin Tigris and their grandmother residing within the sumptuous family penthouse, struggling to make make with tattered clothing and little to allege.

When knowledge of the prequel’s premise broke in January, fans of the long-established seriesspoke out in opposition tothe need for abackstory about its major villain, comparing it to motion photos loveJokerthat appear to provide justification for a personality’s future cruelty. And the major chapters of Collins’ mercurial-paced yarn make stoke a favorable quantity of sympathy; Coryo is a boy under rigidity, convalescing from the traumas of war and shedding his parents whereas striving to make a title for himself in a brutally classist society. Nonetheless Collins wastes no time in planting worrying clues about his factual nature.

The Hunger Video gameslaunched with the scene on the Reaping, the annual ceremony the assign a boy and a girl from each of the 12 districts is chosen to compete in a televised fight to the death—the Capitol’s punishment and reminder to the districts of their loss within the war.The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakesreveals the comparable scene from the quite a lot of side; a neighborhood of 24 Academy college students, Coriolanus amongst them, watches with glee because the tributes are named. These college students will be mentors—a brand unique addition to the 10th annual games, designed to reinvigorate waning pastime within the published—and the winning tribute’s mentor will be awarded a important financial prize. It’s a cross that sets in proceed the games’ transformation from an unsophisticated gladiator-fashion fight royale to the technologically superior spectacle of Katniss’ abilities—excellent among the examples that Collins unveils about Coriolanus’s role in growing the morbid match.

Coriolanus, whose self-esteem, arrogance and self-absorption are underscored by Collins, is decided for the prize. And he’s your complete more anxious when he realizes he’s been assigned the female tribute from deeply impoverished District 12, an project he views as below what befits his family title. Nonetheless Lucy Grey Baird, a sharp singer with an affinity for snakes, proves to be a contender—and a defining check of Coriolanus’s personality. Via their story, Collins attracts a stark line between luxuriate in and possession.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakesbuilds on the long-established series’ overt critique of violence and of us that perpetuate it, all over again in terms that talk over with a more broken-down viewers than their younger-adult advertising may perchance perchance presumably suggest. Nonetheless the assign Katniss used to be a heroine whose flaws had been laid bare as she came into her obtain, Coriolanus most steadily feels reverse-engineered to suit his older mold, and the radical doesn’t fully screen the roots of his at-any-charges ambition. Collins may perchance perchance presumably’ve been better served in exploring theDarkish Daysof Panem by bringing within the viewpoints of among the supporting gamers love Sejanus Plinth, a District 2 transplant within the Capitol who views Coriolanus as a brother, or Lucy Grey herself.

For factual fans ofThe Hunger Video games, Collins shines most as she weaves in sharp particulars that lend depth to the gruesome world she created within the long-established series and Coriolanus’s set in its history. And whereas the personality would now not seem within the timeline, Collins subtly calls back to Panem’s factual hero—one who rose out of a crisis even starker than that of this protagonist. Katniss came all over her blueprint. Coriolanus, successfully, we already perceive how that story ends.

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