5 out of 5

I don’t think I can stop being shocked at how heavy these books are.  Not in terms of Hunger Games politicking or Pottery cliffhangers, just in how true to the ‘Unfortunate Series of Events’ banner under which Daniel Handler sprang his career as Lemony Snicket.  While the AtWQ series concludes with less of a whizz-bang tie-in to that previous series than I expected, it ends up being richer for being its own thing, as well as – though I’m confounded at the audience at which this is aimed – not having to ‘grow up’ with its readers, and thus leaving Handler / Snicket at liberty to wrestle with his complicated story and growing cast of characters a bit more loosely; each book has certainly been a singular mystery, but there was a lot more work down to spread the overall mystery equally between the volumes.  ‘Series’ evolves in fits and spurts; AtWQ absolutely needs to be taken as a whole.  And I suppose I was a little skeptical at first, because I assumed this was going to be uncomfortably swerved into a tie-in.  But by book three, I was all in.  And for book four?  It killed me.  I devoured it.  And although the Baudelaire’s tale’s end was a big emotional hit, the one offered at the end of Why? is even bigger… because of how soberly it’s presented.  The full effect of the journey becomes clear: this is why he narrates The Series of Unfortunate Events the way he does.  It’s amusing in its drollness, as amusing as the cleverness Handler executed there and here, but instead of being the assumed tone due to the humorous title (for Series), the four Wrong Questions books show us his path into drollness.  This is a dark end to the series.  But it’s the right one.  And one of the more complimentary things one can say about any book: it makes me want to reread it, or rather revisit the whole experience.

Book four involves a murder mystery on a train, and does indeed bring to close the story of Hangfire, and Ellington Feint, and Stain’d By the Sea.  I’ll be honest that the timing of these events feels a little mixed up to me, but that’s just another reason to go back and read the whole series in a go instead of separated by months of my failing memory.  What isn’t mixed up, though, is the familiarity Handler has formed for us with the wonderfully varied cast of characters; it’s unusual for me to be able to recall everyone’s storyline from the 18-ish month long journey (first book release April 2014, reading this now in November 2015, and don’t question my monthly math), but the whole Snicket world has been filled with noteworthy figures and the author has just gotten stronger at filling in their personalities with dialogue and emotion over just physical quirks.  Less glowingly, Daniel still stresses mood over setting, so sometimes I can picture the scene but the geography doesn’t exactly line up, but the pages blaze by too fast thanks to the grippingly paced story – almost literally story twists every few pages – for this to really be an issue.

Anyhow, as I think I said last time, you’re not starting the series here, so by now you know whether or not you’re going to like this.  But as a seasoned Snicketer, while I felt a little let down by the lack of answers The End offered, even though one could say that was part of the point, Why is This Night provided none of that disappointment, while still maintaining – perhaps more strongly – the soberingly downcast (but, in my positive spin I consider the individualism it promotes empowering) point of view.  Sad to see this end.