Series Review: A Series of Unfortunate Events
I wrote this years ago. My review style has changed greatly. For one, this entire review was one paragraph. I broke it up for sanity's sake.
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Review of of A Series of Unfortunate Events (all 13 books):
When I was really young, I read the first couple of books in this series and then forgot about it. Recently I decided to revisit it and spent the past couple of months reading all thirteen books.
They are by far the most creative and interactive books I have ever read. A character's fear is described with two pages of blackness. Confusion is described with a whole page written backwards. When another character has Deja Vu, two back-to-back pages are completely identical. One part I especially liked were the occasional letters hidden inside the books, written by the author, who is also a hidden character within the story. Words are regularly defined, sometimes straight from the dictionary but sometimes humorously.
At the core of the series' plot lies the mystery of the VFD. It's a mystery that is never directly answered. You have to read all thirteen books and piece together all the little details. Apparently, it was a group of volunteer firefighters before half the group went rogue and decided to burn down homes, kidnap the orphaned children living in them, and hold them hostage until their inheritance can be stolen. The remaining VFD members lived a life of secretive hiding, which got a bit confusing. It was never completely clear why the schism was so desperate that they had to hide for their lives. They should have just fought back.
Ultimately it got a little confusing and there were tons of loose ends surrounding the VFD, but the main focus was always on the three Baudelaire children and their 13-book attempt to flee from Count Olaf, the man whose custody they fell into after their parents died. Count Olaf was a former member of the VFD now involved in burning down homes and stealing fortunes. Throughout the series, the children discover that their parents were also members of the VFD, and then a bombshell is really dropped: their parents killed Count Olaf's parents, which is one reason he is relentlessly hunting them. But after that, it's never even mentioned again.
That's one of many loose ends throughout the story. While escaping from Count Olaf, the kids go through a number of guardians, most of whom did not leave much of an impression. I liked Uncle Monty, Jerome Squaler, and Hector, but really none of the adults, except for Kit Snicket, had any backbone. The kids themselves are enjoyable. They gradually age throughout the book and you have to look back to see how they've changed, much like in real life. One thing I would have done differently was give each of the kids more than one interest. In that way, they feel a little flat. What I liked was how they solve unrealistic problems while covered in a layer of realistic sadness. They never stop thinking about their parents, but they also don't cross the fine line into agonizing over it.
They end up fighting fire with fire, to quote the book, and feel very conflicted about it. They never really determine if they did the right thing or not. Their main mission--save their friends, the Quagmires--is a failure. In fact, by the end, they even team up with Count Olaf for the sake of their own survival.
In conclusion, I think thirteen books in a series is a little bit too long. At times they were tediously wordy. The supporting characters got a little old. Count Olaf was irritating and underwhelming by the series' end, and I enjoyed Esme Squaler better as far as humor goes. Other mysteries tucked throughout the book are insanely aggravating. For example, the "mechanical device or sea creature" shaped like a question mark in book 11, said to be worse than Count Olaf or even the nameless villains worse than Count Olaf. I want an entire book written on what that thing is. The loose ends I mentioned were a major problem. The ending, with Count Olaf dying of an unspecified injury, leaving the kids on a bland island, felt somewhat cheap. I also feel like the last two books should have been one book. The ending was just too stretched.
Overall, though, it was a very worthwhile adventure. Sunny Baudelaire is the best literary character I read about all year. And the last sentence--the revelation about Beatrice--was well worth all thirteen books. The books started out very funny but by the last two books, all humor was lost in the grimness. I love it when the author mentions that he does not know where the Baudelaires are anymore, if they are safe, or if they even survived their journey off of the island at the end of the book. All along, we never took the journey with the characters. We observed them with the narrator. And that sort of statement is just the vague, dark mystery that these books are really about.
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