I am a big Hunger Game fan so I was really looking forward to yet another prequel. It’s fun to get a glimpse into how Panem got to where it was at the start of the original trilogy, and also when it comes to the evolution of the Games themselves. I was even more excited to get some backstory on Haymitch. He wasn’t a mystery necessarily, but having been a victor in the Games, and be forced for over 20 something years to watch children die, you want to know how he got there. What kept him going? Well, now we kind know. And its even worse than we thought.

SPOILER WARNING: I am assuming that you have read Sunrise on the Reaping of course and I am also assuming that you have read the original trilogy. I am not going to get into specifics about plot, however. You’ve been warned!

I’m not going to get into a recitation of the entire plot, but I will give some info on events in the beginning of the book. This is the story of the 50th Hunger Games- the Second Quarterquell. Twice as many tributes were reaped, so two boys and two girls from each district were forced into the Games. This we already knew from the original trilogy. What was interesting was that Haymitch wasn’t originally reaped. Woodbine Chance should have gone, but he ran, and was gunned down. Haymitch, trying to help his Covey (!) girlfriend Lenore and gets reaped instead. And it’s Haymitch’s birthday! Right from the start, it’s tragedy. From there, things go downhill of course, but a long the way we get a lot of fan service. We see younger versions of some of our favorites, which I won’t spoil, since I think that is part of the little bit of fun we get in this book, but they will be major and minor players in the original trilogy. We also re-visit some characters from A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I appreciated the tie in not only to the original trilogy but also to Ballad. It makes the story feel like one continuous story where we are just dropping in at different times, rather than keeping everything isolated.

On a re-read, I will probably feel like the fan service with old characters was a bit forced, but on my first read through, I was just happy to see familiar characters. And they were not the same people they are in the original trilogy, and you do get to see, in some ways, how and why they are who they are.

And I think that is a large part of what this book is about. Why are these people the way they are? How deep are the wounds they suffered? This is a tragic story that we know has hope in the end, but the road to that hope was bloody and violent. The oppression and cruelty of the Capitol is on full display, but we get to see the seeds of the rebellion. The small sparks that will eventually turn into fire.

The story has lots to say about propaganda and how its used by the powerful to maintain that power. There are parallels between this story and the original trilogy when it comes to propaganda, and you can see how the use of propaganda become perfected by the time of the 74th Hunger Games. I’ll let others dig deeper on that. Its fascinating stuff.

There are other parallels that touch on the hijacking of Peeta and a similar fate of a character in this book, how Haymitch and Katniss’ readings are similar, and also how the face of a rebellion is (or is not) chosen.

This review has been a bit all over the place, but without spoilers, I will say that as a fan of this series, I was really happy with the story and the callbacks to characters and situations from the original series and Ballad of songbirds and Snakes. There are some connections that fans have been speculating on that sort of get answered in this book, along with some other surprise connections. Haymitch’s story is a tragedy, but it’s also the story of a survivor. Being a survivor doesn’t mean that you go back to the way you were, but you are changed forever, and sometimes surviving is just being able to make it through the day. Haymitch made it through decades, but only barely. His journey is bittersweet, but more bitter than sweet. I enjoyed going on this part of his journey with him, and I think you will too.

Lilypad Rating: 4 out of 5