The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13) (Hardcover)

~ Lemony Snicket (Author), Brett Helquist (Illustrator), Michael Kupperman (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Picking up from the final pages of the Pentultimate Peril, this farewell installment to the ridiculously (and deservedly!) popular A Series of Unfortunate Events places our protagonists right where we last left them: on a large, wooden boat in the middle of the ocean, trapped with their nemesis Count Olaf, who has armed himself with a helmet-full of deadly Medusoid Mycelium.

The situation quickly and--this being the Baudelaires--predictably deteriorates. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny find themselves tossed in a storm so terrible that our beloved narrator spends four pages describing how he cannot describe it. From this point on, fans of the series' smarty-pants wordplay and acrobatic narrative can rest assured that they're in for more of the same (and how) in this 368-page finale, and Daniel Handler's deadpan Snicket continues to tutor a generation in self-referential humor (including one particularly funny bit regarding three very short men carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room). Snicket notes, of course, that if you read the entire series, "your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes."

There's one big question, though, for anyone who's made it through "the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history": is the final book a fitting end? That question is probably best-answered by one of The End's most oft-repeated phrases: It depends on how you look at it. Those looking for conclusive resolution to the series' many, many mysteries may be disappointed, although some big questions do get explicit answers. Not surprisingly for a work so deliberately labyrinthine, though, even the absence of an answer can be sort of an answer--and reaction to The End can be something of a Rorschach test for readers. Or, as Lemony Snicket says, "Perhaps you don’t know yet what the end really means." --Paul Hughes

From Booklist

After a singularly bad beginning, the Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, have finally reached the end.The question is, will Book the Thirteenth in A Series of Unfortunate Events meet the expectations of the series' myriad fans? Snicket might put it a somewhat different way: if end simply means to cease, the answer is yes. If, however, end means to complete, the answer is most assuredly no--because though Snicket neatly clips numerous threads in the tragic saga, he leaves others literally fluttering in the breeze. As with the previous books, this one begins where its predecessor left off, with the orphans and the villainous Count Olaf afloat on dangerous open seas. When a storm blows their craft ashore, kindly islanders welcome the orphans, but Olaf is an outcast. Have the children finally found the longed-for "last safe place on earth?" Not so fast . . . before long, they are once again scrambling to avert disaster and death ("Kikbucit," as Sunny puts it when a couple of characters are terminated). If possible, this title is even more preposterous than others in the series (the children help an old friend give birth), as well as considerably longer than some. But frequent references to the other adventures will send Snicket fans back to previous books to delight once again in the idiosyncratic characters, the wry humor, and the wordplay, which has surely increased their vocabulary tenfold. Stephanie Zvirin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9-12
  
• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1ST edition (October 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0064410161
• ISBN-13: 978-0064410168
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (321 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,568 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 13 in The Series of Unfortunate Events Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

71 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Great series, Terrible ending., March 18, 2007

By	David Johnson - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)    (VINE VOICE)

Are you kidding me Mr. Snickett? I've followed these kids through 13 books of misery only to NOT get answers to the majority of the questions? I still don't know why there was a tunnel between the kid's house and Dark St.? I still don't know what was in the sugar bowl? I still don't know what happened to the other triplets? I still don't know (really) what the deal is with you and Beatrice?
Dear sir, I have the sneaking suspicion that these books started as a great original idea, but as of about book 8 you realized you had no way to resolve the myriad plot threads that you'd sent spinning off in a million directions. I feel taken advantage of - a phrase which here means "ripped off." I am ashamed of you, and your publisher for purposely stringing the reader along when you must have known you had no true ending to the series. How do you sleep at night?
Let's hope Mrs. Rowling does better than this in June. You Mr. Snickett, are a hack.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The End, November 12, 2006

A Kid's Review

If you knew me, you would know how excited I was to read the last book in the SOUE series. I loved every single page of every single book, and I was so happy that now I could get all of the answers.

Reader, I can not tell you how much I hated this book.

This is one of the most grotesque, lamest, ridiculous, and throughly unsatisfying end to the great books. Every page is dull and dreary, and though some of the other books were almost sliding to grotesque, it never did, and remained wonderful. This book nose-dives into grotesquery.

Basically the plot is that the Bauldelaires and Count Olaf get swept on to a desert island. There they find strange inhabitants. Thats about it.

Mr. Snicket offers no answers that kept us hanging from the beginning, no payoff, no climax, and definetely left me dissapointed like I've never had a book dissapoint me before. Mr. Snicket, if you're reading this, you should be ashamed of yourself for writing this piece of filfth, this piece of garbage, this loathsome awful book. Since you won't get your answered questions from earlier books, I suggest you stay away from the entire series. I hope they make another Lemony Snicket movie, so we can have a BETTER ending to this story. Hopefully Harry Potter won't end like this...

P.S. I gave zero stars to this book!

33 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Bad Ending - or - Call This Book Ish, November 16, 2006

By	E. Schmidt - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bottom Line: Fans of A Series of Unfortunate Events will most likely be disappointed by this book. "The End" does for series what the movie did for the franchise; and that's not good.

Before I get into the negatives, first let me state the positives. While not as good as in earlier books, the writing in "The End" is clever and still has the trademark Snicket whit and wordplay, although the jokes seem forced and repetitive - but I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Also, the final revelation in Chapter 14 (yes, there is an additional chapter at the end of the book) gives careful readers a lot to ponder. As with all the other books in the series, this is a fun and fast read and, even though there are major problems, I must admit that I still had a good time reading this book. That's about it for the positives.

Now for the downside. First off, you will not find resolution to many of the series' mysteries in "The End": No information on the contents or location of the sugar bowl, nothing more about the purpose of VFD or its schism, nothing about the fates of the villains and volunteers from the fire at the Hotel Denouement (or the hidden library), not a word about the "man with a beard but no hair" and the "woman with hair but no beard," not a peep about the possible survival of one of the Baudelaire parents, etc, etc, etc. The problem isn't that "The End" doesn't explicitly resolve these issues for us (did anyone actually expect that it would?), it's that the layers and layers of intrigue that have been building up for years are largely ignored. The true unfortunate event would be if the series were to end like this, with nothing more to bring closure to these outstanding mysteries.

This volume does add an extensive cast of new characters, however they are all as flat as a pancake (read the book, then try telling one of your associates or enemies anything about the characters Marlow, Larsen, or almost any of the other islanders for that matter - bet you can't). This time around even the series' mainstay, Count Olaf, seem utterly lifeless and even out of character.

The plot of this book is rather dull, which is perplexing considering that this is the longest book in the series. What you will find within the pages of this book are 12 chapters of fairly slow paced and repetitive "story," followed by a long Chapter 13 that is so utterly ridiculous that the writers of Scooby-Doo would feel guilty ending their story (let alone a beloved series) in such a way. It is as if the author got to the end of the book and noticed he hadn't moved the ongoing story forward, so decided to have certain characters monologue about the fates of others. For example, we have all been wondering what happened to the Quagmires and expecting some type of glorious reunion, but I'm quite sure that nobody wanted to hear Kit Snicket say "yeah, they captured some birds and then crashed into the ocean, where the 'question mark' shaped vessel swallowed them up. I don't know if they're alive or not. P.S. - Fiona and the Hook-Handed Man got swallowed too." Lol! As terrible as that sounds, the actual text in the book isn't much better than what I just wrote. Not to spoil anything, but the bit about Count Olaf's fate isn't much better either. The pacing is all wrong: why spend chapters going on about the tedium of island life, and then cram the important contents into a few scant sentences?

Judging by the response to this book, it looks like old Lemony has really dug himself a hole. The fans are mad, and justly so. Even if the series continues in spin-off books for years to come, many fans have been turned of by "The End" and just don't care anymore. The prevailing attitude is that readers would be better off stopping with Book 12; in many ways it is better to use your imagination and think of the millions of possible ways that the series could have ended, rather than reading the thoroughly unfulfilling way that it did end. All I can say is that if there are future books coming, they had better be something 'really' special, or "The End" may be the beginning of the end.