The Austere Academy (Series of Unfortunate Events) (Hardcover)

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.

In this novel we meet the two Quagmire Triplets whose experienced are not unlike those of the Baudelaires. It's still follows the pattern of the previous three books, flawed adults that persistently disbelieve the kids until the last minute, and Olaf in yet another ridiculous disguise, but the introduction of the Quagmires starts the ball rolling with a story arc that makes all subsequent novels a series of masterpieces.

If you haven't read any of the Lemony Snicket novels before (in which case you should really start with "Bad Beginning") he has a witty style that never talks down to his audience. Though he often explains any words or phrases that might not be in the younger readers vocbulary but always does so in a humourous (sometimes quite darkly so) way, that makes each explanation a joy to anyone who like Klaus Baudelaire already know what that word or phrase means. I usually laugh out loud at some point reading each page including the dedication and about the author!

Lots of children's authors are likened to Roald Dahl, but none so deservedly so as Lemony Snicket.