Much like The Miserable Mill, Austere Academy finds Lemony Snicket showing that he set up his formula for the series partly to screw with the reader by changing them up occasionally.

Whereas book four featured very little Count Olaf until the end, with the orphans anticipating his appearance through the bulk of the story, book five introduces him fairly early as a gym teacher. What really amused me is that by this point the orphans are actually learning something. Instead of blurting out, "there's the villain, right there, pull off his disguise!" Violet realizes that the incompetent adults will ignore her, so they play along, biding their time while trying to figure out how to outwit their foe.

Adults are kind of crap to any sort of child who shows a precocious streak. Frankly, adults are kind of crap to children in general. It's the one group no one seems to mind showing intense disrespect to. Snicket sympathizes with this, showing adults that often ignore the Baudelaire orphan's warning regardless of how well informed or articulated they come. As a former precocious child it actually brought back a weird sort of sympathy pain.

If there's one failure in this particular book, it's in their guardian, Vice Principle Nero. He's a braying, terrible violinist who constantly mocks and insults the orphans while reminding them that he's a musical genius. While most adults in the Series of Unfortunate Event books are caricatures, Nero comes off a bit more shrill than I found tolerable. Since he's an antagonist, it was forgivable, but I find pompous characters in childrens' fiction are often off-target when portraying this character flaw. Harry Potter consistently fell into the same pitfall.

The setting is amusing, the orphans actually get other kids to bounce off of, and Snicket continues what he started with the last book by showing that assumptions really can screw with you. I hope he can keep adding new wrinkles as the series progresses.