Its very difficult to hold the attention span of book readers, let alone when the readers are young adults and children. Only a handful of authors have been successful in achieving this. Post Harry Potter, it is even more tough owing to the fact that every book is compared to HP even if there is no relevance. When I finished the HP series, I was dazed too. But like I mention always, great reviews on anything(except SRK and Roshan movies) catch my eye.
So I decided to buy the first three books of ’’A series of unfortunate events’’ by Lemony Snicket (although it may sound feminine, the author is a man who adopted this name to write books). I had to think a lot though to buy these books as they were a steep $50 for the first three. Nevertheless, I was able to overcome my writer’s financial block and buy it.
The Plot :
The series is about the Baudelaire orphans, who lose their parents in a fire accident at home. They are left with a huge inheritance, but no guardians to look after them till they come of age. Enter Count Olaf, a cruel and conniving distant relative, who agrees to be the children’s guardian, so that he can sink his teeth into the Baudelaire inheritance. The series is about the how the three children Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire manage to dodge Count Olaf and escape everytime.
The review:
Well, the story is engrossing, considering you are a young adult/child (Sometimes I am too demented for grown-up books, so I still read children’s books :p) Each of the children has a talent and this helps them get out of sticky situations. The other supporting guest characters in the book are interesting too. The only thing I didn’t like about the series is that it gets predictive unlike Harry Potter(There.....I compared them too!) After two books, you just know that the kids will get troubled by Count Olaf with a new plan and no one else will help or believe them that he is back and at the end the children manage to reveal him and they escape and so does Count Olaf. This pretty much kills the urge to read what happens next, knowing its going to be pretty much the same in the next book. This is the reason, I stopped at Book.8 of the 14(or is it 11).
Still, the Count’s plots are worth reading and this book is definitely one I would recommend.