Mais Violette avait beau rêver d'une invention fabuleuse, Klaus avait beau mijoter une passionnante enquête sur les mousses, Prunille avait beau actionner les mâchoires en guise d'exercice prémordicatoire (mot qui n'existe absolument pas, mais absolument nécessaire ici), à voir la forêt de Renfermy, si sombre et si rébarbative, les trois enfants se demandaient s'ils allaient vraiment se plaire là où on les envoyait cette fois.

Phil s'écroula par terre sans achever sa phrase, blanc comme plâtre et luisant de sueur. De tous les bruits détestables du hangar aux machines, celui-là était le pire entendu à ce jour, et de loin. Le chtamp de l'eschtampilleuse avait été coupé net par un craquement sinistre et un cri déchirant.

The Miserable Mill and The Austere Academy are books 4 & 5 in the series. Both involve the same plotline as books 2 & 3... No one ever recognizes Count Olaf in his ridiculous costumes except the Baudelaires, and no one ever believes them. And in the end, when Count Olaf is finally discovered, he escapes. In the Miserable Mill, the children are forced to work in a lumber mill, and the Austere Academy takes place in a boarding school. At the school, the Baudelaires finally meet some friends their own age who believe them.

 

In the Ersatz Elevator, the formula finally changes. The Baudelaires are adopted by a wealthy family near where their home burned down. As the back of the book says,

"Even though their new home in the city is fancy, and the children are clever and charming, I'm sorry to say that still, the unlucky orphans will encounter more disaster and woe. In fact, in this sixth book in A Series of Unfortunate Events, the children will experience a darkened staircase, a red herring, an auction, parsley soda, some friends in a dire situation, a secret passageway, and pinstripe suits."

 

I was thrilled at a change and having someone else to root for and someone else to hate. The characters are quirky and outlandish, but fun to read about.

 

The mystery deepens...

This post is a little late this week. We were without internet since Sunday morning after a truck driver came through and took out a cable.

 

Books Read: 9

 

"Why is This Night Different From All Other Nights?": This is the last book in the All Wrong Questions series and just like A Series of Unfortunate Events, it doesn't end on a positive note. 4 stars.

 

The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, The Wide Window, The Miserable Mill, The Austere Academy: After finishing the All the Wrong Questions series I had to go and start reading this series again. I didn't realize it had been so long until I looked at my shelf on Booklikes. This is one of those series that I could read over and over again. I will say as much as I enjoy this series, I find that it doesn't really pick up until the fifth book The Austere Academy, though the preceding four books are still enjoyable. 4 stars for The Bad Beginning. 5 stars for the other four.

 

The League of Frightened Men, Too Many Cooks: Two more Nero Wolfe books and two more re-reads, I really am trying to cut down on re-reading. I'm actually enjoying these more the second time around and I'm curious how I'll rate the other books in this  series as I work my way through. 4 1/2 stars.

 

The Final Descent: This is the final book in The Monstrumologist series and I have to say, I don't think I have ever been so disappointed in a series ending (excluding Sherlock Season 4, I'm just pretending it never happened and hoping for another season). The author warns the reader going in that the format of this final book is quite different than the others, but it was still annoying. The ending itself was just ... I knew it was headed in that direction from the previous book, but I was just so unsatisfied in the ending. 1 star.

 

Ongoing Reads: 2

 

The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime: This book is quite interesting, but it's a slow read as well. I'm stuck reading this book only at home because my co-workers, who have never previously taken an interest in what I read, insist on coming over and asking a million questions about it. Aargh!

 

Champagne For One: Another Nero Wolfe book and I actually finished it Sunday morning, but it didn't seem right to count it in the previous weeks tally.

 

~*Full series overview here on ">The Bent Bookworm!*~

Whoo-boy, here we go – The Miserable Mill picks up where The Wide Window left off, with the Baudelaires going off to yet ANOTHER guardian, this one the most mysterious and incomprehensible yet. Things are getting extremely repetitive at this point, so much so that I was tempted to not read this one. But the books are so easy to get through and so FAST to get through that I persevered.

This book gives a new spin to the Baudelaires mistreatment – they actually ARE slaves in this one, for the most part! Thrown into a sweatshop/poorhouse type sawmill, they are used and abused and try to hold each other together. Hope seems to be slipping away from them as they are too exhausted to do anything at the end of the day. But then Klaus breaks his glasses and has to go see the “optometrist.” And all is not as it seems…because nothing ever is, for these kids. Of course no one believes them when they say they are being stalked. Of course no one sees anything wrong with 3 children working in a sawmill – actually, someone does, but has no guts to do anything about it, typical of the “good” adults in these stories. In the end, they of course barely escape per the usual. However, this time, the ending doesn’t have them going off to another relative, it has them going somewhere else entirely, so maybe the next book will have a change in plot. I very much hope so because I really think even most children would be bored with these by now.

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❝ The Baudelaire orphans looked out the grimy window of the train and gazed at the gloomy blackness of the Finite Forest, wondering if their lives would ever get any better.❞

The forth book finds the children at Paltryville, a dreadful place that is in no guidebooks.

This is the worst experience for the Baudelaire orphans (yet). Their new guardian is simply called: Sir and forces them to work on his mill. The work is not for children of course. Soon, they are tired and hungry and wish more than ever that they hadn't lost their parents in that terrible fire. Things of course, get worse when count Olaf appears with a new scheme to seize their fortune. Violet and Klaus switch roles on this story: with Violet reading and Klaus inventing, something I really liked. I wish the next story isn't so traumatic for the orphans as this one was. Off to read about their story in the Austere Academy!