What a vile village the Baudelaires have found themselves in! The gimmick this time around is that the village has a ridiculous set of rules that have to be followed, and it's taken to the appropriate absurd extreme, although I think it could have been even more absurd. Snicket seems to have discovered the secret to a good book in this series is to have at least one decent guardian in a craptacular place, and Hector is almost identical to Jerome in his being too "skittish" to stand up to the village Elders.

The great thing about this book, though, is how it advances the ongoing story with the Quagmires and Count Olaf's history...and Lemony Snicket's. One of the things I've been intrigued about is the role Snicket himself plays in the tale; we keep getting bits and pieces of his relationship with Beatrice but don't quite know what happened. And we know that he has visited all these places but don't know how he's connected to the orphans and/or Count Olaf. And there's a bombshell in this book that just had me going, "What! What! WHAT!" Also, I have an inkling that something I've been suspecting about Count Olaf for a few books now will turn out to be true.

The books have really hit their stride now that there's more to the story than just constantly yelling at adults that IT'S COUNT OLAF CAN'T YOU SEE for three CDs. I enjoy the references to past books, and I like that the Baudelaires are actually growing and developing as characters a little too. In conclusion, Sunny is still awesome.