A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Reptile Room (Book 2) by Lemony Snicket

[Alina]

The Baudelaire orphans go to their Uncle Monty, now that Count Olaf is out of their lives. Mr. Poe drives down Lousy Lane as the Baudelaire orphans try not to gag at the smell of horseradish that covers the road. When the Baudelaire’s reach to Uncle Monty’s house, they are greeted with coconut cake, a hard carrot for Sunny, and a trip to Peru that is happening in 10 days. Uncle Monty needs their help getting ready after his assistant, Gustav, resigns ...! Uncle Monty is a herpetologist, a person who studies snakes, a has a large reptile room in the middle of his house. Uncle Monty puts Violet on making or fixing traps for the snakes that they were going to bring back from the trip, Klaus is on guidebook reading duty, reading about all the routes and different types of snakes in the jungles of Peru, and Sunny is on rope duty, making small cuts of rope from a larger on that they can use on the trip with her small four sharp teeth. Life seems great for the orphans as they get used to the life of living with a herpetologist, but as you and I already know, Count Olaf never rests. One day, when a man named Stephano comes into the house and claims to be Uncle Monty’s new assistant, the orphans realize who he really is and try to tell their Uncle Monty about it, but Stephano never leaves them alone with their Uncle Monty to explain his plot, what ever it may be, to steal the Baudelaire fortune. When Uncle Monty talks to the orphans alone on one rare occasion, he thinks that Stephano is actually a spy in disguise from the Herpetological Society and is actually here to steal the Incredibly Deadly Viper, who is actually a harmless snake and its name is a misnomer. So Uncle Monty tears up Stephano’s ticket to the boat taking them to Peru, but when Stephano hears of this, he tells the orphans not to get to comfortable and the next morning, Uncle Monty is dead. Can the Baudelaire’s figure out who or what killed their Uncle Monty or will they end up going to Peru with Count Olaf and his troop?

I have seen both the Netflix series for this book series and the Nickelodeon movie (2004) and some of the details are spot on and some are not there. Spoiler Alert! In the Nickelodeon film, The viper that is believed to have killed Uncle Monty is the Incredibly Deadly Viper and the Netflix series, this happens as well, but in the book, Spoiler Alert!, the snake that was believed to have killed Uncle Monty was the Mamba du Mal. Also, in the Netflix series, Uncle Monty has a hedge maze that is shaped as the eye on Count Olaf’s tattoo, Uncle Monty uses a spyglass to deciphers a code in the Zombies in the Snow film’s subtitles, The message in the code says the bring the children to Peru, While searching for evidence that the Incredibly Deadly Viper is innocence, Klaus finds a photo of Uncle Monty carrying the spyglass and finds a statue at the center of the maze, and when Count Olaf is discovered, he runs into the maze with the orphans running after him and he escapes with the help of Klaus’ parents part of the spyglass and the tunnels that lead under the city, but before he can escape completely, the statue comes to life and takes Klaus’ parents part of the spyglass from Count Olaf and tries to stop him from going down the tunnel but fails. The statue tells Klaus that her name is Jacquelyn and if they want answers about the spyglass, they will have to go to their Aunt Josephine. These things do not happen in the book or the movie and is there to build suspense. I would rate this book 5 out of 5 stars.

Rate 5 out of 5 stars