Another decent read with Celyn. It seems that The Miserable Mill may have been the low-point of the series as this volume is an improvement. The formula is applied once more, but with a slight variation in that the Baudelaires find friends of their own age and this alliance faces Count Olaaf with predictably grim consequences. 
 What steps this up from the previous book is a return to the established level of surreal, i.e. marked but not extreme. In The Miserable Mill we had Sunny fighting a sword-wielding adult with her teeth (on all fours) and Violet moving a tree trunk with the adhesive power of wet chewing gum. Here we get none of that, instead the strangeness is mostly reserved for the personalities of the adults. As in previous books these are generally an extreme but also amusing combination of stupidity and vindictiveness. 
 These books are perhaps unique in children's literature in as much as the nasty adults not only have the upper hand throughout the entire tale, but there is never any revenge, retribution, or comeuppance for any of them. The evil school vice principle is never punished - he is left in charge to mock and bully his students. The evil mill boss is left unchastened to profit from his slave-labor workforce, and five books in not a single one of Count Olaaf's large and murderous gang has suffered the slightest misfortune... 
 Do children appreciate the honesty - bad people often prosper? Or are they just too caught up in the Baudelaires' struggles to notice? Either way if I have managed to grasp the gist of what people think "grimdark" writing is then The Series of Unfortunate Events books have a great claim to being one of the early pillars of the style! 
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