37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Lemony Snicket strikes again!, September 24, 2003
Though this book was very anticipated, it doesn't meet certain expectations and in my opinion, not really the best of the series.
I think Violet's inventions in this book weren't very fascinating as in the other books... or Klaus' researchings... and I didn't like the fact that Sunny and the elder Baudelaires were separated so much of the time. Definitely not one of the best...
But still, it is Lemony Snicket.
I read this book in a hour and my head was spinning after it. First someone the orphans hoped never to see again returns (No, it's not Count Olaf, though of course, he's still there.) Then a surprisng survivor of the fire... very shocking indeed. Additionally, 2 new VERY mysterious characters... and "the last safe place."
SO MUCH of V.F.D's secrets are revealed in this book, but not all of them.
If you haven't read the earlier books of the series, you really want to read THOSE first before this one. If you HAVE read the other books of the series, BUY THIS BOOK NOW! I'm sure you'll enjoy it as much as I did.
Okay, I'm ready for Book the Eleventh now. The mystery of V.F.D. is killing me.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another brilliant Snicket installment!, October 1, 2003
By A Customer
This book is amazing! Not only does it have the usual dose of the incomprable Snicket's wit, but quite possibly the best-crafted and most exciting plot so far in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Its infinate twists and turns are sure to give immense delight to anyone, as they did to me, and leave the reader anxious to find out what happens next. There's a shock near the middle of the book that is absolutely mind-blowing--unexpected yet logical. And it shines further light into VFD, and FINALLY, we're getting a clearer picture of what the thing is, what it does, and what has happened to it. Also, where I felt the other books were short and over far too quickly, this one (though it still has the same ridiculously large font) actually seems novel length and gives justice to the story. I can't recommend this book enough! Read the others first, don't take the "unfortunate" aspect too seriously, and enjoy this one as I did!
With all due respect,
A Lemony Snicket fan
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24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy this book, however much its possession may imperil you, October 12, 2003
The Slippery Slope is the latest installment--the tenth thirteen-chaptered book in a series that will eventually comprise thirteen books--in Lemony Snicket's *Series of Unfortunate Events.* The books are the product of Snicket's tireless research into the wretched lives of the three Baudelaire orphans, fourteen-year-old Violet, an inventor, her well-read brother Klaus, and their preternaturally accomplished baby sister Sunny. The siblings are orphaned in the first book in the series: as they are later informed by the apparently well-meaning but ineffectual Mr. Poe, the executor of their parents' considerable estate, a terrible fire consumes the children's home one day while they are off at the beach. The circumstances of the fire are, one must conclude, highly suspicious.
Mr. Poe's efforts to place the siblings with a guardian land them first in the squalid home of a distant relative, a uni-browed actor by the name of Count Olaf, who begins scheming at once to make off with the Baudelaire fortune. Olaf's villainous activity continues throughout the series and very often involves his employment of outlandish disguises which no one but the Baudelaires is capable of seeing through. ("Some people called this man wicked. Some called him facinorous, which is a fancy word for 'wicked.' But everyone called him Count Olaf, unless he was wearing one of his ridiculous disguises and making people call him a false name.") As Olaf's girlfriend puts it in The Slippery Slope, "money and personal satisfaction" make Olaf's relentless efforts to seize the Baudelaires' fortune worth the trouble: "Once we have our hands on the Baudelaire fortune, we'll have enough money to live a life of luxury and plan several more treacherous schemes!"
Olaf's villainy is a constant throughout the series, and so is the author's linguistic playfulness--his clever aphorisms ("Taking one's chances is like taking a bath, because sometimes you end up feeling comfortable and warm, and sometimes there is something terrible lurking around that you cannot see until it is too late and you can do nothing else but scream and cling to a plastic duck") ; his amusing verbal tics ("a phrase which here means..."). There are also hints throughout the series about the enigmatic, rarely photographed Snicket's curious life. References to his "pulling aside a bearskin rug in order to access a hidden trapdoor in the floor", for example, or to spending months on a mountain with "only a lantern and a rhyming dictionary for company" slip into the narrative. Snicket is evidently on the run--from whom it is not clear--and so he wisely employs as his legal, literary, and social representative a certain Daniel Handler, who is himself, as coincidence would have it, the author of novels for adults.
I should confess that I am half in love with Mr. Snicket, and I would pledge myself to him eternally were it not for a previous commitment of my own and Lemony's apparent devotion to the deceased Beatrice, to whom he dedicates each of his books (for example, "To Beatrice--darling, dearest, dead"). But I *can* pledge myself to the task of promoting his research into the Baudelaires' lives, and urge you to buy Snicket's books, however filled with horrors they may be, and however much your possession of them may imperil you.
Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece
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