“Sometime in your life– in fact, very soon– you may find yourself reading a book, and you may notice that a book’s first sentence can often tell you what sort of story your book contains.”

From Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Miserable Mill.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire have been through several tragedies at the hands of Count Olaf, including the deaths of two guardians, but Olaf isn’t finished trying to get his hands on the Baudelaire fortune. When the children are moved to a new guardian’s care, they discover that this will be a vastly different living situation; instead of a house, the children will be living in a lumber mill because the new guardian (a man named “Sir”) owns the mill. The children are introduced to the meager library, the employees, and then given difficult jobs at the mill. Klaus’ glasses are broken and a trip to the local optometrist creates more questions/problems for the Baudelaires… it also creates an opening for Olaf to resurface in the children’s lives. There is something wrong with Klaus and life at the mill, if the children can just figure out what it is. It is up to Violet and Sunny to figure out what’s going on with Klaus, who is on their side, and who is out to get them.

Lemony Snicket writes children’s books that are enjoyable for readers of all ages. This is the first book of the series to not be covered in the movie adaptation. It is not the best book in the chronicles of the Baudelaire’s misfortune, but it is a solid part of the series. The lack of enthusiasm for the book should be attributed to the change of format with the orphans’ guardian situation. However, Snicket pulls out the classic puns, pauses in the stories, and vocabulary explanations which makes this a definite enjoyable experience for any reader. The Miserable Mill starts with sarcasm (I mean, look at the first sentence) and it builds on the characters that are easy to relate to and a story that never stops.