Anyone close to my age read the Hunger Games trilogy when it came out in the early 20-teens. I personally picked up the original novel in the clearance section of Walmart my freshman year of college, but all three books were available by then. It was a huge phenomenon, especially when the movies came out. I even saw the original in theaters at midnight. When Suzanne Collins released two more Hunger Games books, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Sunrise on the Reaping, I worried. Were these money grabs? Was she trying to make people like President Snow by making him a main character? Would this undermine the Hunger Games like other once-beloved series were undermined years later? I decided to give them a try.

A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes follows President Snow in his youth, when he was a mentor in the tenth Hunger Games. It discusses what the war was like, how the games began and evolved, and life in the Capitol. Snow became entangled with his mentee from District 12, Lucy Gray, and the book follows the games themselves and the aftermath. 
Sunrise on the Reaping follows Haymitch in the 50th Hunger Games, the second Quarter Quell, where twice as many kids were in the games. It fleshed out Haymitch as a character and showed how he got involved with the people who, in the 75th Hunger Games, helped Katniss and Peeta rebel from within the arena.

Both books rewarded Hunger Games fans with call-backs to the original series that felt organic and not like fan service. The world building fleshed out and added to the world we already knew in a way that felt logical in its progression. While in Sunrise especially you know who wins the games, Collins managed to find ways to surprise me and maintain tension throughout the book anyway. This is similar to the Hunger Games trilogy, where you knew the POV character will win, but kept turning pages to see how.

On the downside, I didn't like being in Snow's POV so Ballad was harder for me to invest in. I know not every protagonist needs to be likable, but knowing who he became later made it hard to empathize with him. 

These books are for you if you enjoyed the original Hunger Games trilogy (although that's not required to understand the plots), if you are in the mood for rebelling against dystopian governments, or if you prefer your romance sub-plots with a bit of tragedy. These books are not for you if you didn't enjoy Collins's writing style in the original trilogy, if you are not in the headspace to read about tyrannical governments, or if you are looking for a happy ending or light tone.


Have you read all of the Hunger Games books? Are you looking forward to the Sunrise on the Reaping movie? Let's discuss in the comments!

Way back in 2021, I read The Lady Astronaut Series by Mary Robinette Kowal, and finally the latest installment arrived this year. As a refresher, the series follows Elma York, a Jewish woman in the 1950s who works for NASA, as does her engineer husband, when a meteor hits earth and changes the trajectory of NASA forever.

In The Martian Contingency, years after the events of The Fated Sky, Elma is helping to build the first long term colony on Mars with her husband and other male and female scientists. Signs in the habitat from the first set of builders suggest something unusual occurred. but Elma is iced out and not told what happened. Due to several strange events, which everyone worries is sabotage, the men and women are separated during habitat expansion. Then, an explosion makes Elma realize what actually matters to her most.

Much like the other books in the series, the world building remains top notch. Elma is an empathetic character who is easy to like and root for, and the sexism she continues to face is, of course, all too real. This book had me on edge worried over everyone.

My one complaint about what might be the end of this series is that the end of the book felt a bit anticlimactic. Everything wrapped up quickly, in a way that wasn't exciting or new, just over. If this was a publisher's choice to limit word count, please know I would have kept reading! Let women write doorstoppers!

This book is for you if you read and enjoyed the other Lady Astronaut books and wanted more of Elma's story, if you enjoyed the survival and science of The Martian by Andy Weir, and if you love books about women in STEM. This book is not for you if you're looking for a STEM romance (Elma is happily married and the drama in here is not about their romance waning), if you were more invested in getting more story about the moon (continuing from The Relentless Moon), or if you're looking for non-fiction about women at NASA. 


Did you read The Martian Contingency? What did you think? And which pie would be hardest to make in space? Let's discuss in the comments!