Summary: Sara’s summer seems very boring, spending her time alone in a foreign country, until the day two wonderful things happen: first, she meets Amesh, a boy she almost instantly falls in love with, and second, she discovers a magic carpet. The three of them (Sara, Amesh, and the carpet) set off in search of adventure, finding it on a mysterious island inhabited by djinn.

This is the first book I got via NetGalley, and I am very sorry to say I hated its guts. While I do know it is a children’s book and I shouldn’t have too high expectations from it, I was nevertheless thoroughly disappointed (and I very much enjoy well written children’s books so I do think I came to it with the correct mindset).

The premise of the book was rather exciting: young girl finds magic carpet and has a series of adventures, it sounded pretty cool and somewhat original (it’s been a while since I read a book with a magic carpet as character). The execution though was unfortunately far worse than I would have expected from such an established writer like Mr. Pike.

For starters, the characters are anything but constant, their behaviour radically changing from scene to scene. Sara is at times wise beyond her years, at others acting like an incredibly silly schoolgirl. Amesh… well, I kinda very much disliked Amesh so I am not sure I’m doing him justice here, but he was so very annoying most of the time: first he complained about everything, plus felt jealous of anything regarding Sara and the carpet; afterwards he acted in such a rough and silly manner I wanted to smack him; then his thirst for revenge clouded his judgement, and so on, only to have him transform miraculously in a perfect mate for Sara later on. A less than believable change if there ever was one.

The relationship between the characters also felt very contrived: they’ve known each other for two days, most of whom Amesh acted like the jerk, and yet Sara is so foolishly in love with him she is making a huge sacrifice in order to save him in one particular instance (possibly endangering the very fate of mankind), shrugging things off by saying something about her love for “a certain Turkish boy”. The same boy who treated her bad not half an hour before and was threatening to kill her own father at that very moment. Does that give a good example to young girls?

The plot itself is rather shaky at best: a good idea, but all the details were rather hastily set together. Including one of my pet peeves, the fact that sometimes Sara just knows things out of the blue (a thing I absolutely hate in books). The psychological impact of any revelation is vastly ignored, making the characters lose even more depth and believability (show spoiler

Thoughts on the title: Having just finished the book I can confess I have no idea who Ka is (he’s been mentioned, but only vaguely) and what exactly his secret is. While Sara does get to find out a lot of unexpected things throughout the pages, I am not sure which of them is the secret that’s so important the book was named after it. “The Carpet of Ka” would have been a far better title IMHO.

Thoughts on the ending: I am fairly certain the ending is paving the way for a sequel :) “Oh Sara, there are many things that need to be done” and so on. Other than that it was enjoyable, but not overwhelmingly so.

What I liked most: Some of the details were nice :) show spoiler

What I liked least: I thought that most of the dialogues were pretty unauthentic-sounding :( A pity since a huge part of the book consists of them.

Recommend it to? Children and children only.

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Summary: Peter, an orphan boy, goes to a fortune-teller to find an answer to his burning question: does his sister live, and if so, where to find her? He is told to “follow the elephant” — but there is no elephant around!

Somewhere else, in the same city, a magician “struck suddenly, and quite forcibly, with the notion that he had wasted his life” tries to perform something spectacular, muttering the words of a spell from long ago — and an elephant comes crashing through the roof :)

The book feels… magic. Just like that. Perhaps because it is, as the author puts it, a story where the impossible suddenly becomes possible. It is a story of love, a story about an elephant, dark at times, but most of all a story of hope. Peter never ceases to hope his sister is alive. The elephant holds on to the hope that she will see her home again. Iddo the blind dog hopes “to deliver, just once more, a message of great importance“. Even the magician keeps hoping for someone to share things with. I think the message of the book is just that: there is hope out there, there can always be a better tomorrow if one does not give up.

The book is filled with interesting characters, that come to life under the eyes of the reader. Such as Bartok Whynn, an artist who used to work at “coaxing gargoyles from stone” on top of a cathedral. He had an accident and ever since that he cannot get over the fact that life is funny, so he laughs all the while, so much so that he had to give up his job. Or a manservant, named Hans Ickman, who suddenly remembered a little white dog he had as a child, and is overwhelmed with how “Life was so short; so many beautiful things slipped away.“. Leo Matienne, the policeman with the heart of a poet, who liked to consider questions like “What if?”, “Why not?” and “Could it be?”, because “We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?“. The elephant herself, trapped in a world she did not belong, without any idea of how she got there or why. Here’s a quote about her:

Deep within herself, the elephant said this name, her name, over and over again.
She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that, somewhere, in another place entirely, she was known and loved.

This is another thing I have liked about the book: the author gives the animals personalities — such as the elephant who wanted to go home or the dog who wanted to be useful — without exaggerating in any way. I think it is a very important thing to teach children about, the fact that animals have feelings too. Sure, they may not be as noble as those in the book, they may not be as nicely worded (or not worded at all), but they are feelings nonetheless and should be taken into consideration as such.

Something that had made me happy:

“The bakers of the city concocted a flat, oversize pastry and filled it with cream and sprinkled it with cinnamon and sugar and called the confection an elephant ear, and the people could not get enough of it.”

I very much love this elephant ear confection (although it’s kinda hard to come by it where I live), and I was happy to see such a creative explanation for it. I think that I shall associate this book with the said sugary thing forever after :)

Another quote that I liked:

“It is the one you are calling Adele,” said the elephant in a slightly louder voice. “I am coming for to keep her and for taking her to where she is, after all, belonged.”
“I am truly sorry,” said Sister Marie, and her face did look sad. “I cannot understand a word you are saying. Perhaps it is because you are an elephant? Could that be it? Could that be the cause of the hindrance in our communications? Understand, I have nothing against elephants. You, yourself, are an exceptionally elegant elephant and obviously well mannered; there is no doubt. But the fact remains that I can make no sense of your words, and so I must bid you good night.”

I very much loved the peculiar wording of the elephant, and the politeness of Sister Marie :)

One last quote, from the book jacket this time — the author speaking about the book:

“I wanted, I needed, I longed to tell a story of love and magic. Peter, Adele, the magician, the elephant — all the characters in this book are the result of that longing. I hope that you, the reader, find some love and magic here.”

Thoughts on the ending: Happy, as befitting a children’s book (I don’t think this is a spoiler as no one expects a children’s book to end in blood and tears, right?). show spoiler

What I liked most: The writing. The writing was breathtakingly beautiful at times. I was expecting to like Kate DiCamillo a lot (I am a fan of Despereaux the movie), but I was unprepared for how much I have actually liked it. Yoko Tanaka’s pictures were perfect for this book too :)

What I liked least: I am too much in love with the book to find it a fault :)

Recommend it to? Anyone, without reserve. It is so beautiful it made my breath catch at times. It is also a short and fast read. I have found it incredible how such a small book can be so very powerful. And oh, how I loved it :)

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Summary: The story picks up where the previous book left off: the Baudelaire siblings are floating on the ocean, in a boat, along with Count Olaf, who carries his precious helmet containing the deadly Medusoid Mycellium. A raging storm sends the boat near an island inhabited by a group of people, all former castaway, leading a life that’s a bit strange: everyone dresses the same, everyone lives in tents, everyone drinks the same thing and eats the same bland food, no books are allowed and other such things. All this because the island’s facilitator is trying to make his island a safe haven, protecting his people from… almost everything.

The three children are happy to feel safe for the first time in their life. But is safety worth the price of leaving the world (and its many advantages, as mechanical inventions, books, gourmet food) behind?

The book poses some interesting issues: Can one protect people by forbidding them things? Should one do that? If the answer to the last two questions is yes, how does one draw the line? Do all people want a simple, safe life anyway?

It was fun to notice the fact that all the castaways on the island had names inspired from other books. There’s a little girl names Friday, for example. Her mother is Mrs. Caliban. The facilitator of the island is Ishmael (“Call me Ish“). And many more, some of whose origins I did not identify (but Wikipedia did so there’s a list of them here :) )

There are also some religious allusions related to the island. Ishmael acts as their Messiah in a way (and even has a flock of sheep he lives in the same tent with), complete with wonders (predicting weather by “magic”). Keeping with his role of God, there’s also an apple tree whose fruits he forbids eating. And one of those is given to the Baudelaires by Ink the snake :)

The volume is dedicated to Beatrice (and alas, we finally get to know, without a doubt, who Beatrice is), in a couplet that shows off Lemony’s poetic side (or lack of it): “I cherished, you perished / The world’s been nightmarished.”

The usual warning to the reader:

“In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires’ story, it is not too late to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf to wither away while you read something less complicated and overwhelming.”

And with this, here I am, at the end of a series that took me a bit over one year to read through. Am I happy I read it? Yes, definitely, because I enjoyed most of the books and their quirky characters (not to mention Mr. Handler’s writing style plus the way he has chosen to insert an alter-ego of his in the story). Was the conclusion worth all the time spent waiting for it? Um…

Thoughts on the ending: While I loved reading this series all throughout, the ending was somewhat disappointing. show spoiler

Another thing I was less than enthusiastic about is the presence of a chapter fourteen. I remember reading somewhere that the series has thirteen books, each with thirteen chapters, and I thought that was cool. Until very recently when I discover the said chapter fourteen. I know it’s supposed to be the epilogue of the book, but I thought that the 13/13 thing was somewhat cooler.

What I liked most: The fact that the Baudelaires, after having all those guardians over the past few months, now end up being guardians themselves (and they do, of course, a much better job out of it than anyone else present in the series) was a nice touch.

Plus the Incredibly Deadly Viper, the one I was sorry to see go at the end of Book 2, is back :)
Not to mention the fact that the island log is named A Series of Unfortunate Events :)

What I liked least: Dare I say the ending?

Recommend it to? Anyone who has read the previous twelve books and is curious what happens next.

See also:
A Series of Unfortunate Events – the website

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

The book was, more than anything, a way for the reader to remember the previous volumes and their characters, because a lot of them put in an appearance for the great meeting that was to take place on Thursday. We have Justice Strauss from Book 1, Sir and Charles from The Miserable Mill, Principal Nero and two teachers from the Austere Academy, Hal from the Hostile Hospital, the three freaks from Caligari Carnival and Jerome Squalor from The Ersatz Elevator. It was nice seeing them all again, each with their own quirks and their own agenda, all the more so because some of them are on the good side and some of them are bad people, and it was interesting to see which was which.

Also, I was happy to get to know, at last, more details about what VFD actually means (the outline of the situation was also presented in the previous book, but somehow it all seemed a bit clearer in this one). VFD’s full name is The Volunteer Fire Department,and the organization used to be one where people around the world gathered in to share knowledge. Unfortunately there was a schism (a long time ago, when Kit Snicket was four), and the organization is now split in two: the noble people, putting out fires, and the villains, setting fire to things. I have to say that the world before the schism sounded idyllic to me (“Before the schism,” Dewey said, “V.F.D. was like a public library. Anyone could join us and have access to all of the information we’d acquired. Volunteers all over the globe were reading each other’s research, learning of each other’s observations, and borrowing each other’s books. For a while it seemed as if we might keep the whole world safe, secure, and smart.“) and I was quite sorry to see that it existed no more. But who knows, there is still one more book to go, perhaps it will all get better again at the end of the series (quite implausible as there are too many villains for anyone to be able to get them all, and put them behind bars or something, however I will keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best nevertheless).

An important theme of the book is that of moral relativism, as the children struggle to reconcile themselves with the idea that they were at times forced to do things that aren’t precisely laudable, and they wonder whether or not can they still be considered good people after that. They do conclude by saying they are probably “noble enough”, but nevertheless they continue to feel sorry and ashamed for some of the things they did in the past. Quite sad if we consider the fact that the three children are actually really good people who only did what they had to in one dire situation or another.

As usual (I almost forgot), a review would not be complete without the author’s warning at the beginning of the book:

[...]the book you are reading now is the perfect thing to drop into a pond. The ripples will spread across the surface of the pond and the world will change for the better, with one less dreadful story for people to read and one more secret hidden at the bottom of a pond, where most people never think of looking. The miserable tale of the Baudelaire orphans will be safe in the pond’s murky depths, and you will be happier not to read the grim story I have written[...]“

Thoughts on the ending: It is obvious that The End is very near. I wonder what will happen next. :) (and I am also looking forward to finding out what was so special about the sugarbowl hehe)

What I liked most: I was amused by all the descriptions of the Hotel Denouement. My favorite details were the fact that on the outside the hotel was painted in such a way as to look perfectly fine when reflected into the nearby pond (all the writing was backwards) and the fact that on the inside the whole hotel was organized after the Dewey Decimal System. :)

Also, another detail I found funny was the fact that the author once said that the denouement of a story “is often the second-to-last event, or the penultimate peril“. While I do not necessarily agree with the statement, it does match the fact that this is the penultimate book in the series, which makes it also the denouement of the story (while it doesn’t contain the actual denouement, it is clear that Mr. Snicket wanted the readers to believe it so). The fact that most of the book takes place at the Hotel Denouement (and there are three Denouement brothers in the cast of characters) only adds to the quirkiness of it all :)

Plus another quote I found funny: “I may have a handsome, youthful glow,” Olaf snarled, “but I wasn’t born yesterday! Ha!“.

What I liked least: show spoiler

Recommend it to? It’s no secret by now that I love this series, so I would recommend this book (but only after the previous ones have been read) to anyone else :)

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto

This book is followed by:
The End

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Summary: It’s Charlotte’s first day at a boarding school. At least she got to choose her bed, the nicest one in the room and the only one with little ornamented wheels. To her surprise, the next day she wakes up in the same bed, in the same room, but there are some things that are different. Such as the girl who calls her Clare, and claims is her sister Emily. And what’s all this talk about a war?

Charlotte is not a stupid girl by far. She realizes that the only logical explanation to everything is that she has somehow gone back more than 40 years in the past (same day only in the year 1918), ending up during WWI. Next day she wakes up in her own time though. The day after she’s back in 1918. And this goes on and on until Emily and her sister are forced to move in another building, so Clare/Charlotte can no longer sleep in the strange bed which they think is what keeps switching them. Unfortunately the move happened in one of the days Charlotte was in 1918, so now she’s trapped in the past as Clare is trapped in her future.

This is a children’s book, which means that most characters are quite nice (and no one is actually evil). I for one have very much liked Charlotte, mostly because she seemed to me quite smart to figure it all out, and also because she was quite a proper young lady (that’s the adult in me speaking). I bet I would have liked Clare very much too (although from what Emily said of Clare she was a bit too proper for me to like), however unfortunately the author has chosen to follow Charlotte everywhere she went, so the reader had no chance to know Clare first hand. Other interesting characters were Emily (who was a wee bit too spoiled for me to actually like) and Miss Agnes Chisel Brown (the daughter of the family where Emily and Charlotte lived for a while), a young woman I couldn’t help feeling rather sorry for because she led a seemingly dreary life, the only highlight being her memories of her dead brother Arthur.

A part that I have found most interesting was the one regarding the idea of identity. Lost in a time not her own, Charlotte tries hard to hold onto her idea of self, her knowledge of being Charlotte not Clare. Also, she is always very interested in the way people around them reacted to Charlotte becoming Clare and Clare becoming Charlotte, because one would expect that anyone knowing one of them would realize that something was wrong the very moment the switch happened. And yet it seems like no one ever suspects the change, at least not at first, a thing that confuses Charlotte quite a bit. This reminded me in a way of a book I read a while ago (I think it was Terry Pratchett’s) stating that people only see what they expect to be seeing, and they sort of imagine away the rest — precisely what happened in this circumstance, with people who expected to see Clare seeing Clare, and people expecting to see Charlotte seeing Charlotte. Speaking of which, I am quite curious actually about how much different were they exactly (from the physical point of view), too bad we are never told (although people who knew them both usually said they were very different, but only after a while).

Two quotes I liked:

“And, she thought, uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel, like Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that”

and

“But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find–the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it.”

Thoughts on the ending: The ending was just as nice as was fitting for such a book and partially predictable too. show spoiler

Also, I was very sad to discover that what I have read is a “revised edition” and it lacks a scene (nothing very important, according to Wikipedia, (show spoiler

What I liked most: I absolutely adore the title :)

The idea of having the two characters try to communicate with one another was also quite cool (too bad it wasn’t expanded on a little).

What I liked least: Too short and a bit too vague? I very much liked this book but I would have loved it to have a bit more “flesh”, to tell us about the experience from other people’s point of view too (Clare’s is the one I was more curious about, since she went into the future not the past).

Recommend it to? Anyone enjoying children’s books. This is a very light volume (I read it in one sitting) but quite enjoyable (albeit I for one would have like a bit more detail hehe).


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Summary: We find the three Baudelaire children where we have seen them last, on a tobbogan floating along the Stricken Stream. The water is cold and they have no way to save themselves — until, luckily for them, they meet a periscope! It wasn’t there by itself, of course, and thus the children arrive aboard the Queequeg, a submarine run by Captain Widdershins and his crew of two (his stepdaughter Fiona and Phil, the cook, whom we have last met in a previous book working at a lumbermill). The submarine is part of the good side of the VFD so the children are mightily glad to see it, and to find out that it’s going on a search for the lost sugar bowl as well. Looking at a map of the currents, Klaus thinks that the only place the said sugar bowl can be is at the bottom of the Gorgonian Grotto, an underwater cave where very poisonous fungi grow.

It seems that, when writing this book, the author was somewhat captivated by the idea of cycle. First of all there are endless descriptions of the water cycle (usually meant to be so boring as to scare readers away from the miserable content of the book). Then, at one point, the cycle of the relationship between Olaf and the three children is mentioned, namely he wants to do them harm, but whenever the Baudelaires are in his clutches they manage to escape and the cycle starts again. My favorite cycle though was the one at the end of the book (although it was a bit soon for me since this is only book 11): somewhere near the end the children end up talking with Mr. Poe on the Briny Beach — the same beach where the same Mr. Poe told them about the deaths of their parents all those books ago. The circle thus came to a close, and presumably a new one has started. Details? In the next book :)

You know, each time I open one of these books I am somehow reminded by the Harry Potter series. Not that there is anything remotely similar regarding the plot, but in the way the series were conceived: the first few books were tame and almost standalone, with a plot spanning exactly one book — however the closer we get to the ending the books became more complicated, more things are at stake and the more complicated it gets to tie up the threads at the end. This particular volume is no exception, and it’s probably the most complicated one yet (without being too complicated for his child readers, of course).

For example, this is the first book where we meet ambivalent characters: usually we knew almost as soon as we set eyes on a new character whether he or she is on the Baudelaire’s side or not. Here we meet “volatile” characters (as the author calls them), characters that aren’t simply good or bad, but a mix or the two. One of the notorious examples is one of Olaf’s henchmen, and I loved the way that particular character, whom we have known for quite a long while now (ever since the first book), turned out to have a side one wouldn’t have thought of before. In his own words, “People aren’t either wicked or noble,” [he] said. “They’re like chef’s salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.”.

Another one of the changes in the series is Count Olaf himself. Now the boyfriend of a very a la mode Esme, and the co-adoptive parent of Carmelita Spats (aka the “tap-dancing ballerina fairy princess veterinarian” of the book), he somehow loses his villainy edge, starting to border on ridiculous at times. The fact that Carmelita ridicules him and calls him County, and his all new laughter (“Hee hee terry cloth!”, “Ha ha handiwork!”, “Ha ha hedgehog”, “Tee hee tonsillectomy!”) make him a less impressive character than before. Gone are the days when he tried a daring disguise, trying to snatch the kids under the very eyes of their legal guardians. While he isn’t less evil, he ended up more like a caricature of his former self than anything else.

It is worth noting how, with each book, the Snicket family enters the scene more and more. We now find out there were three siblings (Kit, Jacques, and “the one with the marmosets”, as it seems Lemony avoids mentioning his own name — although there is no doubt he is the marmoset guy, especially as he has previously stated something about owning a pet marmoset: “Having a personal philosophy is like having a pet marmoset, because it may be very attractive when you acquire it, but there may be situations when it will not come in handy at all.“). While we know the whereabouts of Jacques (or do we, since his initials keep appearing on letters?), and we get to have a short meeting with Kit, Lemony is the only one whose involvement in the story (other than recording it, of course) is not yet clear. This is one of the things I am most curious about in the next two books: will Lemony ever reveal himself as a full fledged character? Will he ever actually help the children and participate in Olaf’s downfall? I’m looking forward to finding out.

The title also has a double meaning, like the one in the previous book did: a literal meaning, an actual grotto (as there previously was an actual slippery slope) and a more philosophical one, best explained by Captain Widdershins: “There was a philosopher who said that all of life is just shadows. He said that people were just sitting in a cave, watching shadows on the cave wall. Aye – shadows of something much bigger and grander than themselves.“. Another image of the situation the Baudelaires find themselves in, a grim grotto of malevolent shadows that hide secrets yet unknown to the three kids.

And, of course, I couldn’t end this review without mentioning the author’s warning at the very beginning:

“Of course, it is boring to read about boring things, but it is better to read something that makes you yawn with boredom than something that will make you weep uncontrollably, pound your fists against the floor, and leave tearstains all over your pillowcase, sheets, and boomerang collection.”

What I liked most: Despite the fact that this is a series of children’s books, there are times when I actually end up learning something new. For example, in this one I have found out the literal sense of “shiver me timbers” (“It is an expression of extreme amazement, used in circumstances when one feels as if one’s very bones, or timbers, are shivering.“) and what a Hobson’s choice is.

What I liked least: Captain Widdershins’ manner of talking. He speaks in rapid short exclamations separated by “aye!”s. Try as I might I couldn’t picture someone speaking like this: “Aye! For the sugar bowl! Aye! For justice! Aye! And liberty! Aye! For an opportunity to make the world quiet! Aye! And safe! Aye! And we may only have until Thursday! Aye! We’re in terrible danger! Aye! So get to work!”. It got tiring really fast, especially as at times some of the sentences didn’t make any sense. Not to mention that, to my chagrin, at one time the Captain leaves his ship and Fiona remains to take his place and adopts more or less the same manner of speaking!

Recommend it to? Completely unsurprising, I recommend this to anyone who read and liked the rest of the series. I really don’t think it works as a standalone book since it heavily references the previous volumes, but if you do know the world involved by all means jump in, as this may be one of the best books the series has (or at least it’s one of my favorites, aye).

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope

This book is followed by:
The Penultimate Peril
The End

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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Summary: The book opens at the very moment the last one ended: with Sunny carried away by Olaf and his troupe, and with Klaus and Violet in an out-of-control caravan, rolling down a mountainside, presumably to their deaths. But Violet’s inventiveness saves them once again, and the children end up walking towards the mountain top because that’s where they suppose Olaf has taken Sunny. Trying to find shelter in a cave, they meet a group of people calling themselves Snow Scouts (who, according to their Snow Scout Pledge, are “accommodating, basic, calm, darling, emblematic, frisky, grinning, human, innocent, jumping, kept, limited, meek, nap-loving, official, pretty, quarantined, recent, scheduled, tidy, understandable, victorious, wholesome, xylophone, young, and zippered“), together with an old acquaintance the Baudelaires probably hoped to never see again. Every cloud has a silver lining though and the one in this case is that not only one of the Snow Scouts knows about the mysterious VFD, but he’s also willing to share with our two heroes the scraps of information he has gathered.

Character-wise this is quite an interesting book, as the by now well-known main characters are joined by others, some we’ve already met and others that are brand new. My favorite part continued to be though the fact that Sunny is growing up, a source of continuous development for her character (unlike her two brothers that, although nice kids that I enjoy reading about, have had no new facets revealed in quite a while). She’s now, as the author puts it (albeit exaggerating a little), “a young girl”, and very proud of it. She is still not talking in complete sentences (with some exceptions), but she is also slowly revealing what is (probably) to be her own talent: while Violet is good at inventing things and Klaus’ favorite pastime is reading, Sunny is a natural when it comes to cooking, and, to be honest, I am very curious to discover the ways this particular skill will come in handy in the next books.

This has got to be one of my favorite titles in the series, because, in addition to the “same-letterness” that can be found in almost all of the names the author chooses for everything he needs to choose a name from, this particular title also has a double meaning. One, the most obvious, refers to the slippery slope that the waterfall has turned into because of the cold, that connects the top of the mountain with a lower level and that will play an important part in the book. The second, the less literal one, uses the figurative meaning of a slippery slope, that of a logical fallacy that ignores the existence of a middle ground between two possibilities, which, more or less, is what happens at one point in the book, as there are two expressions that are mentioned more often: “the world is quiet here” (implying peace, inactivity towards one’s enemies) and “fight fire with fire” (not hesitating to fight said enemies with all available means).

Also, the author seemed to have enjoyed himself tremendously by sprinkling all sorts of cultural references here and there. Such as when Violet tells us about a new know she invented and names Sumac, after a singer she likes (Sumac = Camus backwards, and it can probably be said that “singer”/performer is some sort of opposite to “writer” too). Most of these references are to be found in Sunny’s “dialect” though, such as when she says “Matahari” wanting to say she’ll be a spy, “Rosebud” when she wanted to signal to her brothers to use the toboggan and “Godot”, meaning “We don’t know where to go, and we don’t know how to get there“.

The usual paragraph placed at the beginning of the book, meant to ward off readers, in this case is:

[...]unlike books most people prefer, which provide comforting and entertaining tales about charming people and talking animals, the tale you are reading now is nothing but distressing and unnerving, and the people unfortunate enough to be in the story are far more desperate and frantic than charming, and I would prefer to not speak about the animals at all. For that reason, I can no more suggest the reading of this woeful book than I can recommend wandering around the woods by yourself, because like the road less traveled, this book is likely to make you feel lonely, miserable, and in need of help.

What I liked most: The way the author has hidden a letter to his sister in a particularly boring part of the book :) (much like, later on, a secret clue is hidden in a list of ingredients since no one usually reads those).

Speaking of which, I have a new theory regarding the way the book will end. Not that the series have been predictable on the whole, far from it, but I like guessing at what might happen next. My previous theory was that Lemony Snicket’s beloved Beatrice (that he mentions as having married another man and died sometimes since) was actually the Baudelaire mother. After reading this book though I have a new one [possible spoiler although it shouldn't be since it's only a supposition]: I think that the Baudelaire mother was none other than Lemony and Jacques Snicket’s sister. Time will tell (although to be honest the thing I would like most would be a totally unpredictable denouement)(by the way, the book ended with the children heading towards a hotel called Hotel Denouement, and I don’t think it’s a random name, especially as there are only three more books left of the series).

Oh, and I also enjoyed the hint of romance in the air :)

What I liked least: Nothing (although at first I was a wee bit bothered by the idea of Sunny being called a young girl since she cannot actually talk, plus how old can she be since she was a baby not so long ago — it seemed a bit exaggerated to me; but later on, seeing how much pride she takes in her new state, I sort of got used to the idea and it stopped bothering me).

Recommend it to? Everyone who read the previous books. While the first few volumes could be enjoyed as standalone books too, the later ones are intricately connected so the best way to enjoy them is knowing what happened previously.

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival

This book is followed by:
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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The children are, again, the well behaved and courageous children I have grown to very much like while reading the previous books. Sunny is growing up, bit by bit, and, although she still can only talk in short words (actual ones or invented), she helped someone prepare hot chocolate with cinnamon (after her very own recipe). Making me all the more curious to see how she’ll turn up when she’ll be a bit older. Madame Lulu seemed to me to be quite a promising character, at least because of her smarts if not her decisiveness (I’ll admit she was quite confused), and I would have loved to see more of her in future books. Oh, and let’s not forget Esme Squalor, whose character becomes a bit more fleshed out in this particular book — we discover her to be the jealous type and quite a possessive girlfriend (but does she actually have feelings for the Count? Is she actually capable of feeling? we do not yet know).

This book seemed to me to be a turning point in the series. Up until now the three children were sent in various places and Olaf, in disguise, went along and made their life hell. Here we have the Baudelaire kids taking offensive action for the first time (and probably not the last): this time they are the ones in disguise, closing in on an unsuspecting Olaf, searching for information that could help them get rid of him. Their situation doesn’t improve the tiniest bit though, and the ending is the most suspenseful one yet (for the first time the children have to part). At the same time though there is a certain ray of hope shining onto them, and I am starting to think that I do know how it will all end up. I may of course be wrong but either way I am quite curious to see what happens next.

As usual, the author placed a warning at the very beginning of the book (I’m having fun imagining him wrecking his mind in order to find new ways of telling basically the same thing – “reader, stay away” – at the beginning of every volume). Here’s the current one:

Three times over the course of this story, characters will be inside some terrible place with little chance of escaping safely, and for that reason I would put this book down and escape safely yourself, because this woeful story is so very dark and wretched and damp that the experience of reading it will make you feel as if you are in the belly of the beast, and that time doesn’t count either.

What I liked most: The fact that the answer to a question the reader might have had after reading the previous books (“How did Olaf always knew where to find the children?”) is now revealed. And it’s quite a simple and logical one too.

What I liked least: I must confess I was a bit bothered about the way the lions were treated by the Count, as I do not like reading about cruelty to animals. I do understand the fact that the story needed that (the Count being the vile person that he was he couldn’t have acted any other way), I just did not enjoy it.

Recommend it to? Anyone who enjoys children’s books. Especially dark and gloomy ones. Knowing the prequels is not absolutely mandatory but would very much help.

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital

This book is followed by:
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

The author has taken the strange, twisted world from Lewiss Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”, reinterpreting the characters and (some of the) events in order to make them form one big, connected story. There are characters corresponding to almost every one of the important characters in “Alice”, only usually with an amazing twist: so much so that they are hardly recognizable but for one detail that gives them away. For example, Redd is the author’s take on the Red Queen in “Alice” — although the two have nothing in common but the habit of screaming “Off with his/her head!” when angry. The Mad Hatter has become Hatter Madigan (nothing in common but the name and the top hat), a feared warrior who became a legend in our own world. The grinning Cheshire Cat (predictably enough one of my favorite characters in “Alice”) is no longer grinning and no longer Cheshire: he’s called The Cat and he’s a huge cat with literally nine lives, a trained assassin under Redd’s command. The “pair” that amused me the most was the one between the White Rabbit and Bibwit Harte — while Harte has nothing of a rabbit whatsoever, him being the respectable tutor of a long line of Wonderland queens, his very name is an anagram of “White Rabbit”! (luckily this is mentioned in the book as I am fairly certain I wouldn’t have thought of that myself :) ). Speaking of characters, a novel one but also very captivating is the general Doppelganger, who can, at will, split in two identical generals, General Doppel and General Ganger :)

I very much loved the way real characters are intermingled with fictional ones. From the very beginning we are told that Lewis Carroll wrote “Alice in Wonderland” after talking to Alice Liddell (a thing every fan of the Alice books knows as true). The twist is that Alice is very much insulted when seeing the book, as it’s nothing like what she remembered of Wonderland — so much so that she never wants to see Lewis Carroll again (something that actually happened in real life too, at one point Alice reacted this very way, only the reason is unknown). I was absolutely delighted to read this part due to its roots in reality — less so when I saw how the story unfolded though: Alice met Prince Leopold and he fell in love with her. Now this struck me as too much a liberty to be taken with real characters, how could a real prince meet an fall in love with an ordinary girl, especially one as plain looking (or so it seems to me) one as Alice Lydell? But then I looked them up on Wikipedia and, to my utter surprise, there is actually such a rumor, of something having been between Alice and the prince! And yes, he did name his daughter Alice and she did name her son Leopold, just as in the book :)

Since we’re talking of inspiration, I was also amused to note how the kingdom during Redd’s rule was similar to 1984: television screens everywhere, people watched, texts being rewritten, children telling on their parents and getting them sent to the mines for “thoughtcrime” — to name but a few. The author has been careful to also add some unpleasantness of his own though (or at least I don’t remember it from anywhere): there are speakers everywhere, always blaring, not a moment of silence, because, as Redd puts it, silence breeds dissent.

What I liked most: I was fascinated by the very world Beddor imagined. Cities with gleaming buildings, people going to work in “in sleek glass tubes hovering on cushions of air“, a world where, most of all, the imagination becoming reality is a common occurrence. Speaking of imagination, in Wonderland there are two kinds of imagination: White Imagination and Black Imagination (just like there is magic in other worlds hee hee). Here’s a quote I liked about the world:

[...] most of Wonderland took pride in the Inventors’ Parade, the one time every year when citizens flaunted their skills and ingenuity before the queen. If Genevieve saw something in the parade that she thought particularly good, she would send it into the Heart Crystal—a thirty-three-foot-tall, fifty-two-foot-wide shimmering crystal on the palace grounds, the power source for all creation. Whatever passed into the crystal went out into the universe to inspire imaginations in other worlds. If a Wonderlander bounced in front of Queen Genevieve on a spring-operated stick with handlebars and footrests and she passed this curious invention into the crystal, before long, in one civilization or another, a pogo stick would be invented.

And another one, to get a better idea about how imagination in Wonderland worked:

[...]the queen imagined new weapons for herself—swords, sabers, spiked clubs—whenever one was knocked from her grip. She was always armed with four weapons at once, her imagination swinging two of them, to fend off attacks from behind.

Now that’s some imagination, isn’t it? :)

What I liked least: Well, there are some details not very well taken care of — such as how did Dodge get to London on the first try as there was supposedly no way to control the destination? Let’s call it luck but how about The Cat? Or the part where all the mirrors were broken (Redd broke all mirrors thinking of them collectively as mirrors not thinking of each one in turn so the hidden mirror shouldn’t have escaped unharmed). Nevertheless truth is that on the whole I liked reading about that world so much I very easily ignored everything that didn’t fit, not letting it stand in the path of my enjoyment.

Recommend it to? Well, that is perhaps a bit of a tough one as I have seen a few reviews of the book written by “Alice in Wonderland” fans and some of them were very very upset with the author (I never understood why, but then again I am not that fond of the first “Alice” book either). So, if you really really like the original book and do not ant your image of that world challenged in any way, this book is not for you. Everyone else, feel free to give it a try, who knows, you just might like it as much as I did :)

See also
real Alice Liddell’s Wikipedia page, with her pictures taken by Lewis Carroll (some of them mentioned in the book)
The web site dedicated to the series (it also has games! :P )

This book is followed by:
Seeing Redd | ArchEnemy

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

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As far as characters go, Sunny is still my favorite of them all. She is speaking clearer now, still in very few words but usually identifiable ones. She seems to be growing up fast I am very curious if she’ll grow some more teeth in the near future :P (right now she only has four). Also, Lemony Snicket himself is weaving more and more of his own story in the book: so far we know that he was (is?) very much in love with Beatrice (this particular book is dedicated to her by the way); she married someone else and then she died of unknown reasons — presumably something having to do with Esme Squalor (the mystery deepens). I am wondering if Beatrice is by any chance the mother of the three Baudelaire kids, hee hee, as she sort of fulfills all the conditions (she was married to someone else than the author, she knew Esme Squalor, she died). An interesting character in this book (albeit one with a very short presence in it) was Babs — the Head of Human Resources at the hospital, whose firm belief is that children should be seen not heard and adults should be heard and not seen (which is why no one has ever seen her, she communicates to people via intercom) :)

The author’s warning to the reader in this book (as you have probably noticed by now I sort of collect them) is:

But there is another reason why a writer would end a sentence with “stop” written entirely in capital letters, and that is to warn readers that the book they are reading is so utterly wretched that if they have begun reading it, the best thing to do would be to stop STOP. This particular book, for instance, describes an especially unhappy time in the dreadful lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire, and if you have any sense at all you will shut this book immediately, drag it up a tall mountain, and throw it off the very top STOP.

I find it fascinating how he says the very same thing at the beginning of each book, and yet in very different ways and words :)

Speaking of the author I was amused to notice some of the names he chose to give the hospital patients: we have an Emma Bovary, and also a Mikhail Bulgakov and a Haruki Murakami :)

What I liked most: It is interesting to note how, with every book I get more and more curious about what happens next and how on earth will the series end. Surprisingly enough I am not in the least bit bored with the series although this in no less than the 8th book! :)

What I liked least: Nothing, hee hee :) Of course I have my doubts about Sunny being taken for a grown-up woman (and Klaus too) but oh well, everything is possible in this kind of books :P

Recommend it to? Anyone who liked the previous books, of course (while the first few books were sort of stand-alone, sharing only their characters, the latest few are connected and at least the previous one is needed in order for this one to be properly understood and enjoyed).

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village

This book is followed by:
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril
The End

The links to amazon.com and bookdepository.co.uk are affiliate links. If you click one of them and buy something, I receive a small percentage of the purchase price. This being said, rest assured that the few cents I might thus make will never influence what I say or do not say about any book reviewed on the site.

Incoming search terms for the article: