The Vile Village is where the whole VFD thing really starts to take off and the original formula of a new guardian followed by Olaaf turning up in a new disguise starts fraying. 
 The village is quite fun, replete with dozens of vile villagers, hundreds of ridiculous rules, and thousands upon thousands of crows. 
 The off-beat humour continues with Sunny's one worders and their elaborate translation, and the extreme stupidity of everyone who isn't a Baudelaire. 
 The penalty for breaking almost any village law is to be burned at the stake - which seems pretty gruesome in a children's story. And we come pretty close to seeing it carried out. 
 Perhaps though this story is most memorable for the WORST INVENTION EVER. Violet's inventing skills are put to the test when the children need to break out of a jail cell. The solution is to pour water from a jug ... along a bench ... and onto the wall where it ... weakens the mortar between the bricks. The water is then mopped up with bread, the bread is squeezed over the jug, the process is repeated. ... and it works. 
 The Quagmires are back again. The Baudelaires hunt for them in a book-spanning plot that makes no sense at all, involving clues sent by the Quagmires. And they're eventually found in a location ... that, at the risk of repeating myself, MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL. 
 In fact, very little of this book makes any sense. But, Celyn enjoyed me reading it to her, and it's an OK book, little better or worse than its mid-series predecessors. 
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