A pleasant enough prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy. I wasn’t much of a fan of the Coriolanus/Lucy Gray romance – but I enjoyed the explorations of the true purpose of the games and the nature of evil, which reminded me of Andor. It’s not explored in as much depth, but seeing how the games are actually run and the decisions that go into them is a good way to show how terrible things manifest.

This book is set fairly early, for the tenth annual Hunger Games, when many of the elements familiar in the original trilogy have yet to be created (e.g. all the games take place in the same arena). In a macabre way, it helped me appreciate the cruelty of the later games, when decisions have been made to really twist the knife.

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