4 out of 5

Well, as an Amazon review of a different Snicket book went – you’re probably buying the book because you’ve liked a previous one, in which case you should know what you’re going to get.  This could be insulting to the author, suggesting a pony with one trick, but I see it as a compliment of the reliably strong smarts at the core of any Lemony – yes, pseudonym of author Daniel Handler (and a ‘character’ in the world in which the books take place) – tale.  There’s so much creativity to be witnessed in any given work that saying that the style of humor and writing is predictable is something of a misnomer.  Yes, aimed toward a youthier market, Snicket makes a habit of defining words and concepts as he goes along, but its done so cleverly that you never mind, the definitions often humorously giving us several ironic layers of context along with the ‘technical’ meaning of the word, all without missing a beat in a story’s pacing or coming off as smarmy or silly.  There’s a running theme of distrust in the Snicket world, purposeful or inadvertent as our emotions lead us astray, and it is the characters’ open acceptance of this concept that makes presenting things in this fashion between the covers of the books.  In the Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony told us of the Baudelaire orphans’ growth through 13 books of evolving complexity.  Now with All the Wrong Questions, we step back into the ‘author’s’ past to read about the beginnings of secret clubs and the roots of mysteries.  Perhaps.  Or perhaps we’re just to find out more about Snicket.

In book 1, a pre-teen Lemony ditches his parents at a tea house to sneak out a back window and meet his new ‘chaperone’, his guide for his apprenticeship in an unnamed society we can only assume is VFD (from Series) or some precursor.  We are told he will never see his parents again; we are told he purposefully chose the last-ranked guide out of 52 so that he might have opportunity to dedicate himself to an unexplained secondary task of stealing a mysterious object… while he ‘assists’ his guide – S. Theodora Markson (“What’s the S stand for?” being a forever unaswered ‘wrong’ question) in their ‘official’ capacity as recoverers of the stolen statue of ‘The Bombinating Beast’ for a Mrs. Sallis in the mostly empty town of Stain’d By the Sea, which, naturally, is no longer by a sea.

First time readers might be experiencing several rounds of “What?” by this point, but part of the rewarding nature of Snicket’s writing is that it works better sequentially and isn’t reliant so much on twists as on revelations.  There are certainly enough details for those jumping on at this point to follow, but it’s accomplishment is to entertain and make you eager to go forward and back – you want the sequel, you want to re-read this one, and you want to read what came before it, and all of it will be good on that first or second or third pass… but even better on subsequent go-throughs.  What becomes more tolerable as a seasoned reader is allowing all of the unexplained to pass by, trusting the author to address what’s relevant as things go along.  …The flipside of this is that ATWQ is undeniably designed with the assumption of an older audience – either adult readers that came into the fold or the kids who grew up as Unfortunate Events was coming out – and thus we’re not really given much to go on in this volume.  ‘Series’ earned its mysteries.  If you go back and read the first few, while they’re left open-ended for sequels, it’s questionable whether the many layered levels of the later books were part of the original plan or evolved over time… versus ‘Questions,’ which even by the second chapter is neck deep in vaguely referenced characters and jobs and secrets and many, many questions which we’re told are wrong… but only wrong in the retrospect of whatever point in time Snicket is intended to be scripting these tales.  Thankfully, Handler / Lemony is so skilled at keeping things brisk and interesting, with plenty of characters who tickle all the right notes of blended stereotypes and realism, that the book is compelling, but it’s a tad frustrating wondering if the millions of unmentioneds will turn out to be just a gag (like all the VFD red herrings) or something that will actually be explored.  Time will tell.

And will I be willing to put in that time?

Undoubtedly.