Readers of the Hunger Games are familiar with Haymitch, the drunken mentor of Katniss and Peeta, and with how he won his Games, and what happened afterward – but not all is as it seems on the big screen.
I love The Hunger Games series, and I really enjoyed The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, so even though I am not as interested in Haymitch’s Games as many other fans are, I was still incredibly excited when this book was announced, not only for the chance to explore the world of Panem further, but because I knew that if this was the story to be told, it must be very different from what the readers have so far been led to believe.
I read this book in a single sitting (facilitated by flight delays, but at least I had a good way to pass the time)! I became engrossed in the lives of Haymitch and the supporting characters, and that’s a tough thing to do when you know how their stories are going to end. I teared up a few times, and I don’t do that very often! I also loved how Collins played with the distance between perception and reality, and all the (mostly awful) ways that it was manifested.
I did think the narrative voice was a bit weaker than what I’ve come to expect from Collins, though – after Katniss’s terse, taciturn narration and Coriolanus’s hilariously delusional one, Haymitch’s feels a bit ordinary, but perhaps that’s the point. I also felt the pacing was a bit off, especially how it gallops in the third section. I know people didn’t love how long Ballad was, but here another 50 pages could have made a big difference!
I’m definitely going to reread this soon, still.