I'm no fan of Harry Potter, but I sensed this children's series would be more up my sadistic alley, and it is.
The Bad Beginning starts with the death of the Baudelaire children's parents and concludes with the underage Baudelaire girl in a forced marriage to their wretched guardian, Count Olaf (don't think I'd give away the real ending, I'm not that horrid). In between are beatings, failed escapes, a precariously dangling cage with a tied up baby inside and lots of bitter tears.
Sweet stuff, considering it's aimed squarely at the 8-13 year-old crowd, and closer to my own experience than I'd like to admit.
Unlike tedious Potter, who's never afraid and always succeeds (at least in his first book, Harry Potter and the Cave of Zanzidee), the Baudelaire kids are smart but not omniscient, and they screw things up simply by trying to make things better. They're scared but they take action anyway, and that's a real hero in my book. Also in my book: tasty recipes for low-fat pudding.
Snicket (a mildly amusing pseudonym; her real name is Lemon Ann Snickett) tells a ripping good yarn in a concise manner with some entertaining wordplay – again, in direct contrast with the morbidly-obese Potter tomes. He also starts and ends his book with a short warning of things to come, drawing the reader into his happily cruel world.
This is good, intelligent writing, dark but not gruesome, clever and cheerily macabre. Sometimes a little too clever, yes, but short enough that the negative clever quotient doesn't take control.
Finally, a book for abused children and emotionally scarred adults that doesn't have the phrase "Recovery From" in the title!
Review by Crimedog
