Moments of lyricism and literary flourishes help to leaven the grimness as the backstory of Haymitch Abernathy, eventual mentor to Katniss Everdeen, takes centre stage

From the publication of the first volume in 2008, Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games series was an enormous hit, later adapted as hugely successful films. Inevitably, a prequel was spawned, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (2020), now followed by Sunrise on the Reaping, set about a quarter of a century before the events of the original trilogy.

The books’ success partly lay in Collins’s skilful refashioning of an ancient story, the myth of the Minotaur, which she placed in a futuristic world, giving agency to the weak to overthrow the powerful. But it also came from her close attention to the effects of social media and reality television, as she examined the line between the authentic self and pretence, and how narratives can be manipulated for advantage. In this new book Collins returns to these familar themes with the story of the likable Haymitch Abernathy. Readers have met him already, as a mentor to the original trilogy’s beloved heroine, Katniss Everdeen.