This book was excellent...until it wasn't.

Suzanne is an excellent storyteller, and it was great to revisit the world of Panem 60+ years ahead of the The Hunger Games. I loved the background and expansion of how the Hunger Games themselves were developed, the extra layers of detail showing the Capitol's recovery from the rebel attacks, and the morsels of call-backs (call-forwards??) to the OG trilogy kept me enthralled.

The use of President Show as the protagonist was an interesting choice. It was hard to equate the Coriolanus (or Coryo to those near & dear) of TBoSaS with the eventual antagonistic, sadistic President Snow. I was waiting for such a major cataclysmic event, and perhaps my lacklustre feelings towards the ending are because I expected something major, but I found the ending just...meh. 

I wanted and obvious turn of our protagonist from 'good' to 'evil' when, in truth, Coriolanus was always a morally grey sociopath, so there was no chance for me to be shocked into his villainous turn. I wish we could have gotten an alternate POV removed from his own internal monologue to get an outsiders perspective on his behaviours or actions. Lucy Gray would have definitely benefit from some more screen time, IMO. She was an intriguing character and her eventual arc left little to be desired. In truth, I was definitely waiting for

her to die in the Hunger Games, so having her win and then, eventually, wiping the entire games out of existence

seemed like such an odd (and kinda lazy) choice to me.

All in all, it just didn't really...go anywhere or provide anything necessary to the overall universe of the Hunger Games. What is has done though, is make me want to re-read the original trilogy because it's certainly been a while!