I like the narrator and illustrations. The tragedy in children’s fiction makes this series stand out. 

There definitely is a formula in this series with the children getting dropped off to an

incompetent

guardian,

Count Olaf (in disguise) finds them, no one believes the children, dramatic scene where children narrowly escape Count Olaf’s clutches, Count Olaf escapes.

This book does break the formula a little bit by using the lumber mill and Sir as a guardian, a workplace instead of a home. Violet and Klaus also have some character growth, which is nice.

That plot would’ve been just fine without the issues mentioned in my content warning notes.

In this, the 4th of the Series of Unfortunate Events, I feel like we are really leaning into the absurd. The children are boarded in a lumber mill that operates in a very fanciful way. The children are supposed to earn their keep by joining the workers on the shop floor who have to slave for a ration of chewing gum for lunch, and are "paid" in discount coupons, but have no money to make purchases.

The foreman is mean, the owner is a man whose face cannot be seen through a cloud of cigar smoke, and the children meet an optimist who is maimed and an ineffectual well wisher who is imperiled as though it were a melodrama.

I have become very suspicious as to how gender is depicted in these books. Given that one of the recurring baddies is considered monstrous due to being of indeterminate gender. When our fancy-dress nemesis adopts the role of a receptionist woman, I can't help but feel like this is yet more milking laughs out of the ludicrous insistence that the protagonists call an obviously uni-browed imposter "Shirley". It should be amusing and innocent, but it just smacks of transphobia.

I get very confusing vibes from the character of the boss's partner. He's a kind man who is pushed around but doesn't seem to think this is overly problematic. He is a "partner" in name only and is lorded over by a jolly gaslighting sociopath. Part of me hopes this is a brilliant way of inspecting the normalised garbage that women are put through in marriage, but I fear that it's yet more homophobic nonsense.

As far as gore goes, this is the first of the books where there is specific horrific damage to people. In previous books there were amputees, people who died (offstage as it were) in fire, due to murder or abandonment, but in this story there are messy industrial accidents right in front of you. The idea of strapping a victim to a log in a mill has actual tension because another character has already had their leg smashed in another contrived accident. A ridiculous sword fight ends in distraction and a giant circular saw blade.  We go from absurd to messy all in one breath.

The library in this book is sparse (3 books?!) and the children learn all about the science of eyes and hypnotism. It's silly. It's garbage. It's kind of cute. Maybe this is wearing thin on me.

THE MISERABLE MILL turns up the cruelty and adds a new flavor of transphobia. Like many transphobic depictions, it manages this without a single (known) queer person in sight.

In addition to briefly continuing the transphobic and fatphobic descriptions of one of Count Olaf’s henchpeople, it uses a transphobic fearmongering trope of a man dressing as a woman in order to get illicit access to children (the man, of course, is Count Olaf in yet another disguise). It also adds derogatory language for little people as a bad joke about the three children not being as tall as adults, then it doubles down by continuing to use this term throughout the book for no reason other than cruelty.

This doesn’t specifically wrap up anything left hanging from the previous book, but it does reference prior events and the ongoing threat of Count Olaf’s schemes. The storyline is new, in a new setting with new cruelties. It doesn’t specifically leave anything for later, other then that Olaf gets away again and the Baudelaires are still orphans in need of a guardian. The narrator is consistent, slowly dropping hints about his own tortured past. This would mostly make sense if someone picked this up and didn’t know about the other books, or even if they only read the first book and skipped to this one.

The characterization of the kids is slowly developing, with them having to do things that one of the others is normally the one to handle. It's nice to see them growing as characters, even if just a little in the short time the book covers. The plot is fine, it incorporates a workers’ rights narrative into the ongoing child abuse saga. Unfortunately it also features malicious crossdressing, as I mentioned earlier. I liked some bits of the sawmill storyline, but am sour on the book overall.