This is my favorite of the books so far! I really enjoyed that the Baudelaires' misfortune wasn't entirely caused by the terrible Count Olaf. The kids learning each other's skills was also a nice twist.

Another wonderful edition to this series. Even if they always follow the same pattern, I find I can't help myself wanting to jump into the next book to see what happens. I don't know if this makes me a terrible person because nothing good ever happens to Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, but it does make for some good reading. I would recommend this book to pre and early teens. 5 out of 5 stars.

Boy, is miserable the best word to describe what happen's to the Baudelaire's. That miserable feeling even leached out to me, so I felt like I was in the run with them, even though I am fortunate to not live in a dingy place and get fed casseroles every single day. This one has always been my least favorite out of the series, but it's not so bad that I can't get through it. I'm glad that this particular setting was used in one of the earlier books, so it's shorter, and I don't have to deal with it for as long.

The setting is awful, not because Snicket made a lazy setting, but because the location is so dreadful, that's the whole point of this book. It's so awful that it's beautiful, and I love it, but it was also very draining. Just having to read about the orphans at the Lumber Mill sucked the life out of me, and it was almost a breath of fresh air to get to leave. Lucky Smells Lumbermill is probably the most inhumane place the Baudelaire's stayed at, and it was almost frustrating how cruel it was, and how the adult's in this book were so depressed that they couldn't care less. I'm also still not entirely how the Baudelaire's even wound up there in the first place. It's all rather confusing.

(Potential spoilers in the next paragraph)

The use of hypnotism annoyed me quite a bit. A lot of the scenarios in this series is unrealistic, but the world was still based in reality rather than fantasy. There aren't any fantasy elements present in the books, but this crosses the line. I'm not well versed in the world of hypnotism, but I know that what happened with Klaus is not realistic, even by Snicket's standards. It's so out of the blue and unexpected, but not in a good way. If you're going to throw something into your book, you don't add something that contradicts the world's laws of nature. It makes absolutely no sense. It isn't creative, it's just a lazy attempt to throw in action. Maybe to a kid, it might seem cool, but children's literature can appeal to children while still making sense and not having lazy plot devices. Snicket usually does a good job at avoiding this very issue, but in this book he fails, and it shows. It wants to make me question the entire world of the books. If what happens to Klaus is realistic, then what else is? Can people fly? Fall from great heights and be unscathed? Can someone go for days at end without needing to eat or sleep? (Apparently the last one is true, but that's something I'll discuss in a review for one of the later books).

This book has an interesting concept, but it isn't executed the best. A combination of conflicts being too unrealistic and the atmosphere being dreadfully depressing makes me want to not read this book again. If I was to sit down and read one of the books for fun, it would not be this one. I don't hate the book, I still enjoyed it, and I wouldn't skip it if I was rereading the series, it just wasn't my favorite. Fortunately for me, the next two books are my favorite books in the series, and there is nothing in this book that could dampen my spirits enough to not finish this series.