12 November, 2003
The Slippery Slope, Lemony Snicket (337 pp, HC, 2003)
One problem with long series is that you never know if the author will manage to tie together all the plot threads and bring the series to a satisfying conclusion, or if they'll mess it up. All too often, it's the latter situation. The good news is that the Series of Unfortunate Events doesn't seem to be headed in that direction.
This newest installment picks up where The Carnivorous Carnival left off, with Sunny captured by Count Olaf and Violet and Klaus hurtling towards certain doom. The elder Baudelaire siblings quickly get out of that predicament, and set out to rescue their sister, and to locate the secret VFD headquarters. Over the course of their latest adventure, many of the mysteries which have arisen over the course of the series are solved. The Baudelaires (and the readers) learn:
They also learn that their lives prior to the fire were not exactly what they'd believed them to be.
Of course, new questions arise even as the old ones are answered. Who are the new villains who terrify even Olaf? Who has been keeping the Baudelaire orphans under surveillance? Have all the kids' guardians been connected to VFD in some way? What was the VFD schism about?
Anybody who thinks this series is written only for kids knows some exceedingly precocious children. In order to get all the jokes and references in this volume alone, a reader has to be familiar with (among other things) elementary Japanese, U.S. politics, Golden Age science fiction, World War I, Nietzsche, Citizen Kane, poetry, and Russian literature. It'd also help to know one's way around a kitchen.