A Series of Unfortunate Events #5: The Austere Academy CD

Rating:
Summary: Bleak, depressing, and wonderful...
Review: The Austere Academy, fifth in A Series of Unfortunate Events, will not disappoint fans of the books. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are stuck at a nightmarish boarding school, where they are made to live in a shack that includes territorial crabs, a strange tan fungus, and truly hideous wallpaper. Added to this are incredibly dull classes and a headmaster who cannot play the violin but insists on doing so anyway...for six hours a night at an all-school concert. If only these were the worst of the Baudelaires' problems, they could finally consider themselves lucky. But, alas, the fiendish Count Olaf has tracked them down yet again. Once again the Baudelaires must try to discover his evil plan in time to save themselves and their fortune. Along the way there are more clues about Lemony Snicket's mysterious lady love, the charming and beautiful but unfortunately deceased Beatrice...A great read, but be warned that the ending is a cliffhanger that will leave you feeling very impatient to get your hands on the next volume!

Rating:
Summary: A delightfully miserable continuation!
Review: The lives of the three Baudelaire orphans - fourteen-year-old Violent, twelve-year-old Klause, and baby Sunny - continue along their miserable path in The Austere Academy, the fifth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Their latest home is at Prufrock Preparatory School, headed by the nasty Vice Principal Nero, who gives dreaful six-hour violin recitals nightly. Forced to live in a miserable shack, the children only encounter one bright spot - they make friends with two other orphans. But nothing good lasts long if you are the Baudelaires - Count Olaf is in disguise at the school, planning to steal their fortune. I highly reccomend this addition to the series. It is one of the most delightful - eh, miserable - so far.

Rating:
Summary: Tremendous
Review: This book is the best book I have ever read. I love all of the books in this series, but this is one of my favorite of them all. I recommend all of the books as well as this one.

Rating:
Summary: Series just keeps on bein' good.
Review: Lemony Snicket, The Austere Academy (Scholastic, 2000)

The poor unfortunate Baudelaire orphans are back for their fifth trip through the lively imagination of Mr. Lemony Snicket. This episode sees them carted off by their guardian, Mr. Poe, to the Prufrock Academy, prep school for... well, you're never really sure for whom. There's another pair of orphans, who used to be triplets; there's Carmelita Spats, an elementary school child out of the nightmares of everyone who ever went to elementary school; there's the tone-deaf vice-principal, a pair of teachers who actually quite remind me of a professor I had in college, and there's Count Olaf, of course. (There's also Beatrice, but she plays very little part in the overall story, and can be summarily dismissed from everything save Mr. Snicket's mind.)

Those who have already started reading this amusing, well-written series don't need a review from the likes of me. Those who haven't, go back and start at the beginning, or you'll be hopelessly lost. There's a major development in the writing style in this book, but as it concerns the last chapter, to reveal it would be a spoiler (a word which here means "a sentence which would defeat the purpose of me telling you to go out and read the book, already") of disastrous consequences. Suffice to say you'll notice something of a difference.

As usual, well worth reading. *** ½

Rating:
Summary: The Austere Academy Review
Review: After their extremely unfortunate stay at a disastrous mill, the three Baudelaire siblings find themselves once more without a home. And now Mr. Poe, who is the person in charge of administering their estate until Violet becomes of age, has gotten the orphans admitted to Prufrock Preparatory School. If you have read the previous books in this series, you are aware that Count Olaf, an evil man that will stop at nothing to get their fortune, has constantly harassed the Baudelaires. One of the reasons why Mr. Poe chose the school to which they are headed is that it has an advance computer system that is supposed to keep the hideous count away.

Upon their arrival at the school, Violet, Klaus and Sunny start oddities about the place, like the fact that all the buildings are shaped as gravestones and that the school motto is the one shown in the title of this review and means "Remember you will die". But these are mere nuisances that in a different situation would make the children laugh, since they had gone through much worse. Unluckily there are more important obstacles that the children have to face, like vice principal Nero, who is a very annoying and conceited man that spends almost all his time playing the violin...BADLY! He decides to send the siblings to live in the orphan shack and they also have to follow the capricious rules that govern the lives of students at Prufrock. The most important and annoying of these rules is that they have to attend daily a six-hour concert in which Nero performs with his screeching violin. The penalty for not doing that is steep: buy a bag of candy, give it to the vice principal and watch him eat it.

There are several aspects of this series that I enjoy greatly, and I found all of them in this book, making it one of the best in the series so far. One of these is the cleverly depicted characters, which have characteristics that allow Snicket to create funny situations throughout the story. In this case, we find Nero, who Snicket uses in great fashion to make us laugh. The author also has a great ability for interjecting hilarious comments that are most of times nonsense, but that work well with the tone of the story nevertheless. These also provide a nice balance with the unfortunate situations the Baudelaires go through.

Of course, Count Olaf shows his ugly face, with his continuous eyebrow, in this story, but we also get the chance to meet a couple of other very interesting characters. Like Carmelita Spats, who is the typical bully present in all schools in this planet. But the orphans also get the chance to meet other orphans, the Quagmire triplets. They only get to meet two of them though, since one of them is dead. The Quagmires also come from a wealthy family and quickly become that Baudelaires' best friends.

The new characters provide the story with more depth, and as we have seen in other children's series, like Harry Potter, the plot is starting to be more complex and elaborate. Also, the suspense level is clearly increasing and it is hard to stop between one installment and the next. If you are following this series you will not be disappointed by this episode, and if you have not read any of the books yet, I recommend that you start with "The Bad Beginning", you will not be able to stop after that.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Book....so far! Bubble
Review: If you've read the first four books of this series, you know that they all follow a very clear pattern: the children are sent to a guardian, Count Olaf arrives, the adults are unhelpful, and the children have to defeat the Count on their own. As enjoyable as those books were, by the fourth one (The Miserable Mill), it starts to wear a little thin. Mill is a fun read, but you start to wonder if the writing has turned into a math problem which always has the same constants.

Book 5 is when the series starts to change, with the arrival of the Quagmire Triplets. Their relationship with the Baudelaires gives the children some happiness, and it's also the first time any character in the books other than Violent, Klaus and Sunny recognize Count Olaf in disguise. The pattern doesn't truly get destroyed till The Vile Village (book 7), but this one is the first to let us know that these books aren't one-trick ponies, albeit with a trick that manages to entertain even when you see the strings.

Anyway, another great entry.