First of all I love the layout of this books so I'm gonna try to review it, in 3 parts, just as the way the book is written.
Part 1- Getting to know Coryo's World
I already knew when I got the book that it was going to be about President Snow as a teen and I was very excited to read it! Coryo (I love that, that's his nickname so that's what I'm gonna call him) as a teen is hanging on to his reputation as 'capitol' by a thread and this means he is constantly trying to exude wealth to fit in with his classmates even though he doesn't have any wealth, I found it interesting to know that he wasn't simply born evil, though he's a very self-centered conscious person he is still in touch with humanity and his grandma and Tigris I think are the reason for that. Part 1 teaches us so much about the games and how they've started which we simply didn't get from the trilogy but also we learn so much more about the war and I personally found it interesting to be given so much context. We also meet Lucy Gray and the other tributes for the first time and I instantly fell in love with her, she's very witty and she obviously makes a great entrance. I was really shocked by Clemensia's incident and I found it interesting that Collins decided to credit Coryo with the idea of being able to sponsor a tribute and send them food. We can sort of sense in part 1 Coryo becoming very conflicted between his thirst for power and his love for Lucy, but Dr Gaul definitely pushes him towards power especially after he has to save Sejanus who I think is a beautifully written character to parallel Coryo off, Sejanus has wealth and could easily attain power but much to his fathers disappointment, he doesn't want it.
Part 2 - The Games
By the time we get to the games we've already seen a fair bit of brutality in the book but I found it interesting how they don't look after the tributes and only about half of them make it to the games at all! I don't want to spoil all the action, but obviously I would argue this is the easiest part of the book to fly through because of the action. Ultimately Coryo's decisions as Lucy Gray's game guide mean she wins the games but he is getting punished and he loses almost everything he values and is forced to sign up as a peacekeeper and asks to be assigned to district 12, this is when Dr Gaul basically removes this hunger games so it will never be shown which kind of explains why we don't hear about it from Katniss.
Part 3 - A different perspective
I really wasn't expecting this part of the book because I thought the book would conclude more after the games but I am so glad it didn't learning more about district 12 and building up to us why he hates district 12 and the birds so much I thought was so smart, I also enjoyed the backstory of the hanging tree song. Meeting the covey I would say was one of the highlights of the book, I loved Mauve Ivory. I wasn't really shocked by Coryo's betrayal of Sejanus because I felt like he'd been on that path anyway I mean he is the bad guy, duh. His defining moment when he chose Power over Love was character making and I feel like we understood why he did this. I was shocked at the part after that but I wasn't mad about it, I thought it wrapped things up nicely.
Overall I enjoyed the read, I would even reread it. Though I wouldn't compare it to the original trilogy I read it more as a standalone novel but I would recommend it. I found it interesting and I enjoyed learning more about Panem. 5 star read.