Okay. I know it doesn’t sound like I’m taking this seriously when I start with a children’s lit. book, but it just so happened to be what I finished this past week, so bear with me. This blog is going to be about all the types of books that I read. And I do enjoy children’s lit, especially when my brain needs a rest from college material. Plus I haven't read this series, I thought that I’d give it a shot.
So, The Austere Academy is the fifth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It picks up where the last book (The Miserable Mill) left off. Mr. Poe takes the Baudelaire Orphans to Prufrock Preparatory School, where they met the awful Vice Principal Nero, two of the three Quagmire triplets and the awful Carmelita Spats. Not to mention Count Olaf in disguised again, as "The finest gym teacher in the world".
Actually I like most of this book. I thought it was a lot better than The Miserable Mill, this might sound crazy but I thought this one pulled on my heart stings more. Granted, child labor sucks in any story, but having you’re friends being kidnapped when all they were trying to do was help, yea, pulls on the strings a bit.
That brings me to the Quagmire triplets. Now, they were very interested characters. I like that they were there to relate to the Violet, Klaus and Sunny, and that for once they had someone sane on their side. However, I’m not sure how that them getting kidnapped, and having the Count with him is going to play out into the next story (if at all, maybe he’ll just kill them off…). In my own little fantasy world, it all works out, but this series is not meant for happy endings, is it?
At first I really didn’t like the whole concept for Olaf making the orphans doing S.O.R.E. (Special Orphan Running Exercises) all night and really did not see the point of it at first. But as I got to the last few chapters I began to realize how it fit it. And I was pleasantly surprised.
The one thing that really started to bug me was Snicket’s rants about Beatrice. Now, normally I love those rants, they are what make the books fun and not horribly tragic all the time. But mention it once, cool. Twice…all right. Three…please stop. But hey, if that’s my only grip, than well done.
I know this is a pretty lame over view and review, but I’m doing this without the book in front of me, I had to turn it back into the library because I got it though MELcat. I promise a better one next time.
All in all I give it 3.5 out of five.
