'The Carnivorous Carnival: Book 9'
By: Lemony Snicket & Brett Helquist
(Hardcover / 304 Pages / HarperCollins / ISBN: 0064410129 / $10.99)
Description:In the ninth title in Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Carnivorous Carnival, the Baudelaire siblings are falsely accused of murder. On the run from Count Olaf (the real killer), the three disguise themselves in Madame Lulu's House of Freaks; Violet and Klaus masquerade as the two-headed Beverly/Elliot; Sunny poses as Chabo the Wolf Baby.
Verdict:If you are an avid reader of these books, you will certainly know that Lemony Snicket, or whoever this guy is, is definitely not your run-of-the-mill children's writer. No, not at all. In addition to writing a hit series, he has pulled pranks like filling up two pages with a couple hundred copies of the word "ever", or filling two pages with ink. Or how about his autobio that didn't really help readers understand anything about the now-puzzling series, but was just a series of nonsense? It may have been at that point, or maybe at book #4, when Olaf is "disguised" pitifuly as a female - but whenever it happened - this series has simply gone too far. Lets think back, just a little bit, to just about any book in the series. Olaf & a few of his troupe have put on disguises, chasing the Baualdaires to various places, fooling the parents, getting sooo close to one of the children, & then failing. Gee, wonder what the plot of this one is. Yeah, it could be worth the ten bucks, but the stuff at the end may be the only part worth reading. Otherwise, you have 200 pages of Snicket explaining what Sunny's babble means, magicaly understanable to Violet & Klaus, explaining what semi-complicating words mean, encouraging you to put the book down & run away from it, & inching the reader ever so closer to: the Snicket file, VFD, & maybe even the truth as to if the parents are alive. Tell ya' what, I'm tired of that chiding to the end, only to find out that , miserably, they are worse off than before. Tired of being teased, goaded to find out what the real answer to everything is. Yeah, I'll still read the series (you should, too), but the series needs an end, SOON. Lemony Snicket, or - again whoever he is, is truely a great author, but he's just wasting his time. Here's my idea that would please me: end the series in the next one, and then start a brand new saga!!
Colm Darcy