Several years ago I noticed the A Series of Unfortunate Events books, and thought they looked kind of interesting. Then the movie came out, and was actually pretty fun. The last straw came when my mom told me she had the first 9 in the series, and would love to loan them to me.
I really only have three things to say about the books, and I won’t belabor them.
1. I got pretty tired of them by book 5. I very nearly quit reading them, but persevered. They’re incredibly formulaic. The formula is actually fairly unique, which makes the first books fine. But the last 4 have the same formula. Now, the last 4 also began to just hint that there might be a larger story, but I never got to it, and it took entirely too long to drag out.
2. Lemmony Snickett is an incredibly clever, witty author. That’s primarily what kept me involved. The man is amazing in that regard.
3. The books are all dedicated in some way to Beatrice, who is dead. Lemmony Snickett loved her, and she is dead dead dead. By about book 6 though, we began to learn that Beatice is in some way connected to the characters, and that intigues me.
Also, each book ends with a weird crazy description of both the author and the illustrator. The author picture is always hazy and indistinct, like all of the author pictuers described in the book, and the artists picture is always a self protrait in the style of a character from the book.
That stuff is just neato.
Since I can see that the writing is quality, and Snickett obviously knows what he’s doing, I can’t simply chaulk this up as bad literature. I can only say that I got pretty tired of it, and I wish I had re-read the Harry Potter series before the next book came out.
