The hero we never knew we needed.
A few months back, a Hunger Games prequel was confirmed.
This generated a lot of excitement among fans of the first book, as well as fas of the subsequent books and the movies too.
As franchises go, it was pretty successful, so it only makes sense then that author Suzanne Collins decided to write a prequel to the events that went down in her original series.
What doesn’t make sense really is her choice of protagonist, but hey, we’ll take what we can get.
The new book – called The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – follows none other than the terrifying, the ruthless, the irredeemable President Snow.
However, this time around, he isn’t all that terrifying, ruthless, or irredeemable. Rather, he’s actually a young boy who’s doing his utmost to graduate from the Academy and go on to become a mentor for someone from the 12 Districts.
A recent extract from the upcoming novel as published by Entertainment Weekly revealed that young Snow was expecting to be mentoring somebody from the affluent Districts 1 or 2, only to have his world thrown into disarray when he discovers that he’ll actually be sent somewhere else entirely.
The book, set 64 years before the start of the Hunger Games, is currently scheduled for release on May 19, 2020.
“With this book, I wanted to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we perceive is required for our survival,” said Collins last year.Â
“The reconstruction period 10 years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days — as the country of Panem struggles back to its feet — provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define their views of humanity.”
And while there’s been no confirmation on a movie adaptation just yet, we can probably go ahead and presume that that will, indeed, also be happening.
Good news all round, tbh.