A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Thirteenth
This is it, the longest series we’ve read together as a family, and we’ve finally reached The End, the thirteenth book in this series of unfortunate events by Lemony Snicket. I’ve gotta say it from the get-go: I was a little bummed by this book and can’t really understand why this had to be its climax.
The Penultimate Peril, the second-to-last book in the series, was held in an ingenious setting, the Hotel Denouement, a hotel organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. In a series where libraries are nearly a constant character themselves, this was the perfect context for a final showdown. In that story, we got to meet again all the important characters from the preceding books, friends and foes alike. Count Olaf stood on trial and was released only by the devious cheating plots of his own mentors—otherwise, he could have been convicted by Justice Straus herself.
Things could have ended in such a finely circuitous way. It could have been such a nice little package! But it wasn’t.
Instead, the Baudelaires escaped the hotel with Count Olaf in tow. They arrived on an island that’s never been mentioned before, to meet a man that’s himself a brand new character. I don’t’ care about this place. I’m not invested in it. I don’t care about this man with the clay feet either. I don’t even care that he had known the Baudelaire parents before, because by this point, who hadn’t?
I’ve got to admit, by finishing the book this way, I felt like I did when I watched the last episode of TV’s Lost. So much time invested in a story that held so much promise…and for that?
Don’t get me wrong. I felt that Snicket tied up every loose end that needed tying. I get it that he hadn’t been able to do this in Book 12, but I also get a sense that he didn’t really try. “Why do a clean 12 books in my series?” he thought. “I’ve got a reputation for being odd, so why not do a baker’s dozen?”
Kit Snicket’s importance to the plot, as announced in this book, has been vastly underplayed throughout the series, and it makes me think that the author was just making stuff up as he went along—that he really didn’t know the ending from the beginning (again, like the writers of Lost). That might endear him as a surprising author to some, but not to me. Writers may not know the details of their stories before they write them, and they may not yet be aware of how their heroes will survive the scrapes into which they place them, but they must have a general idea of where the story is headed, or else it risks going nowhere or, worse, the wrong way.
I like that Snicket divulges to the children some of their parents’ secrets. I like that Count Olaf meets his end (and, short of incarceration, death by mushroom-spear in the gut is as fitting as any). But I love how the children become adoptive parents to Kit’s child and escape to a world that (hopefully) will be just a tiny bit brighter. At least for these reasons, this was a conclusion worth reading.
Overall, I wish this book had been one installment shorter and that Snicket had tied up these loose ends at the Hotel in Book 12. Still, this series was a pleasant (if not unfortunate) journey into a unique world created by a very unique mind. Justice prevailed, and after all this time, I think that’s what surprised me the most.
©2021 E.T.
Read More in A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket:
1. A Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket (1999)
2. The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket (1999)
3. The Wide Window by Lemony Snicket (2000)
4. The Miserable Mill by Lemony Snicket (2000)
5. The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket (2000)
6. The Ersatz Elevator by Lemony Snicket (2001)
7. The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket (2001)
8. The Hostile Hotel by Lemony Snicket (2001)
9. The Carnivorous Carnival by Lemony Snicket (2002)
10. The Slipper Slope by Lemony Snicket (2003)
11. The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket (2004)
12. The Penultimate Peril by Lemony Snicket (2005)
13. The End by Lemony Snicket (2006)