The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

In the arena, Coriolanus secretly gives Lucy Gray his mother's perfume compact filled with rat poison, and after further cheating to protect her from Dr. Gaul's snake mutts, Lucy Gray wins the Tenth Hunger Games. Embarrassed by the chaos and cheating that marred the Games, the Capitol destroys all footage and erases the record of what happened. Dean Highbottom confronts Coriolanus with proof of his cheating, and to avoid his family's public disgrace, Coriolanus is forced into a twenty-year Peacekeeper contract. He requests assignment to District 12 so he can be near Lucy Gray, and the two resume their romance there.

Coriolanus grows suspicious that his friend Sejanus Plinth, also sent to District 12 as punishment, is conspiring with rebels. He secretly records Sejanus admitting his plans and sends the recording to Dr. Gaul, leading to Sejanus's public hanging — a betrayal Coriolanus keeps hidden. Shortly after, Coriolanus and Lucy Gray witness Mayfair Lipp and Billy Taupe spying on a rebel meeting; in the ensuing violence, Coriolanus and the rebels kill them, and Coriolanus flees but leaves behind guns bearing his fingerprints and DNA. With the murder weapons still unrecovered and his path to an officer post at risk, Coriolanus agrees to run away with Lucy Gray. While escaping, he lets slip that he was behind Sejanus's death.

The two find the hidden guns in a rebel cabin in the woods, and both realize Lucy Gray is now the last living link to Coriolanus's crimes. She slips away into the woods on the pretext of gathering food. Coriolanus, bitten by a snake he assumes she set as a trap, chases her in a rage and fires his gun into the trees after hearing her sing the final verse of "The Hanging Tree," echoed by mockingjays. He never confirms whether he hit her, and her ultimate fate is left unresolved. He destroys the guns and returns to District 12 alone.

Rather than facing consequences, Coriolanus is summoned back to the Capitol, where Dr. Gaul arranges a pardon and secures him a place at the university. Sejanus's grieving parents name Coriolanus their heir, unaware he betrayed their son. Visiting Dean Highbottom, Coriolanus learns the Hunger Games originated as Highbottom's drunken idea, seized upon and pushed forward by Coriolanus's own father — the source of Highbottom's guilt and hatred toward the Snow family. Highbottom then drinks a vial of morphling that Coriolanus has secretly poisoned, and dies. Coriolanus goes on to become a Gamemaker, introducing reforms like the Victor's Village and rewards for winning districts, cementing incentives that entrench the Games — and beginning his rise toward the absolute power he holds decades later.

This book is a prequel set roughly 64 years before the original Hunger Games trilogy, following a young Coriolanus Snow — the man who becomes the tyrannical President Snow. As you move into the next installment, here is where things stand.

Key figures: Coriolanus Snow, eighteen, from a once-prominent but now poor Capitol family, mentors Lucy Gray Baird, the female tribute from District 12 and a member of a traveling musical family called the Covey, during the 10th Hunger Games. Sejanus Plinth is Coriolanus's wealthy District 2-born classmate and friend, sympathetic to the districts. Dr. Volumnia Gaul is the sadistic head Gamemaker who mentors and manipulates Coriolanus. Dean Casca Highbottom, creator of the Hunger Games, has a hidden grudge against the Snow family.

Over the course of the book, Coriolanus mentors Lucy Gray through the brutal, still-primitive Hunger Games, falling for her while also helping engineer innovations — betting, sponsor gifts — that shape the Games' future. Lucy Gray survives and wins after Coriolanus secretly poisons a rival tribute via a hidden compact of rat poison. Afterward, cheating scandals force Coriolanus into a twenty-year Peacekeeper enlistment; he chooses assignment to District 12 to stay near Lucy Gray.

In District 12, Coriolanus betrays Sejanus by recording his rebel sympathies and sending the tape to Dr. Gaul, resulting in Sejanus's execution. Coriolanus and Lucy Gray also kill Mayfair Lipp and Billy Taupe during a violent rebel encounter, leaving incriminating weapons behind. As Coriolanus's crimes threaten to catch up with him, he and Lucy Gray plan to flee District 12 together, but he lets slip his role in Sejanus's death. Lucy Gray disappears into the woods; Coriolanus, wounded by a snakebite and enraged, fires his gun after her, uncertain if he hit her. Her fate is left unknown and unresolved at the end of the book.

Coriolanus escapes any real consequences: Dr. Gaul pardons him and secures him a university placement, and Sejanus's unwitting parents make Coriolanus their heir. He learns from Dean Highbottom the guilt-laden origin story of the Hunger Games (created from Highbottom's own drunken idea, seized by Coriolanus's father), then murders Highbottom by poisoning his morphling. Coriolanus becomes a Gamemaker, introducing reforms — like the Victor's Village and rewards for winning districts — that entrench and legitimize the Games going forward, marking the start of his ascent to the presidency readers know from the original trilogy. Open threads include the true fate of Lucy Gray Baird and the long road by which this morally compromised young man becomes the Hunger Games' ultimate architect of oppression.