Welcome to my weekly segment, Waiting on Wednesday, where I look at upcoming books that I am planning to order and review in the next few months and which I think I will really enjoy.  I run this segment in conjunction with the Can’t-Wait Wednesday meme that is currently running at Wishful Endings. Stay tuned to see reviews of these books when I get a copy of them. In this week’s Waiting on Wednesday entry, I look at the young adult novel that I am most excited to read next year, the upcoming prequel to Suzanne Collins’s epic The Hunger Games series, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes.

For those of you who have been living under a literary and cinematic rock for the last 10 years, The Hunger Games books were a trilogy of extremely popular young adult dystopian novels. Starting in 2008 with The Hunger Games and followed up with 2009’s Catching Fire and 2010’s Mockingjay, The Hunger Games books followed the adventures of protagonist Katniss Everdeen in Panem, the nation that formed in the ruins of North America. Katniss, a sixteen-year-old girl from District 12, is forced to compete in the titular Hunger Games, a yearly spectacle that sees 24 teens from the 12 districts fight to the death in an elaborate arena for the amusement of the Capitol. The Hunger Games are a designated punishment for the districts after their defeat in a brutal civil war by the Capitol 74 years before. The books are pretty amazing, and they were quickly adapted into a series of four extremely popular movies, resulting in a huge following for The Hunger Games franchise.

As a result, I think that it is fair to say that The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is set to be released on 19 May next year, is probably going to be biggest young adult fiction release of 2020. Not only is this the first book that Collins has written since Mockingjay (with the exception of the children’s book Year of the Jungle) but it will return readers to the world of Panem and show a whole new side of this dystopian future.

Goodreads Synopsis:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes will revisit the world of Panem sixty-four years before the events of The Hunger Games, starting on the morning of the reaping of the Tenth Hunger Games.

I admit that this is a rather sparse synopsis that does not give a lot of plot details away. While I imagine that a much more comprehensive synopsis will be released in the future, the details released above, combined with information contained within the original three books, allows us to make a number of educated guesses about the plot of this book.

The most important detail contained within the synopsis is that this book will feature the 10th Hunger Games. To me, this is a very exciting development, and I am really glad that we are getting a prequel. While I am sure that Collins would be able to write a compelling sequel to The Hunger Games trilogy, I think that most readers will be keen to see an earlier adventure that contains a Hunger Games (I suppose a sequel could also contain a Hunger Games, but I do not think that would work). The whole battle royale concept of the Hunger Games is pretty darn compelling (I mean, if you don’t mind stories about fictional children murdering each other), and the idea of checking out some of the historical Hunger Games in any format is pretty awesome. I personally would love to see a book or movie based around the 50^th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell games, in which fan-favourite character Haymitch Abernathy won, as I reckon you could get a pretty fun and dramatic story out of it, even if it is based on only a few pages from Catching Fire.

Focusing on the 10th Hunger Games is a very interesting choice from Collins for a number of reasons. First of all, this is going to be fairly early edition of the Hunger Games, and it will be intriguing to see how different it was during the initial games, and whether it is viewed with as much spectacle as the later games. As it is only 10 years removed from the end of the civil war, I imagine it might be viewed differently, and be less about entertaining the denizens of the Capitol. It also seems likely that Collins is going to explore the events of the civil war and the origins of the Hunger Games in a lot more detail in this book, especially as the events of the war are going to be in all the competitors’ living memory.

Another cool thing that I like about setting The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes during the 10th Hunger Games is that Collins will have to come up with a whole new group of characters from both the districts and the Capitol. Due to the 64-year gap between this book and The Hunger Games, none of the characters who were featured in the original trilogy are likely to appear in this book. The original series’ oldest character, Mags, won the 11^th Hunger Games, so it is very unlikely we will see anything from her. We also won’t have President Snow as the book’s antagonist, as he was only 12 years old during the events of the 10th Hunger Games. Instead I reckon that the book’s antagonist will be the person who originally came up with the concept of the Hunger Games, which is a very tantalising prospect. This lack of known characters also means that there are no spoilers for who is going to win the 10th Hunger Games and how they are going to do it. While you would assume that whoever narrates this new book is going to be the eventual winner (if Collin’s uses the same first-person perspective that she used in the original trilogy), it is going to be very interesting to see how the winner ties into the future games and books and what adventures they are going to have. Perhaps they train Mags in the next book, or maybe they are responsible for Snow coming to power. It is going to be very exciting to find out.

I think that is enough theorising for now. Suffice to say, I am pretty thrilled and curious about this new entry in The Hunger Games franchise. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has some real potential as a novel, and I cannot wait to see what Collins comes up with in this prequel. This is definitely one of my top anticipated reads for 2020 and I am really looking forward to returning to this dystopian universe.