Paperback Castles

"The Bad Beginning" by Lemony Snicket was by no means a bad beginning. Actually it was a rather enjoyable one that made me want to read the rest of series.

The plot reminded me a bit of Roald Dahl's "Mathilda", as it's also a story of a mistreated child who's too clever for her surroundings.
But unlike Mathilda, the Baudelaire children do not have a happy ending, which the narrator constantly warns his readers of. In many ways this seems a surprisingly dark children's story.

Every character seems to have their very own peculiar strangeness and little delightful whimsies, making them come to live even though they're generally one-dimensional.
From the rational high court judge Justice Strauss who loses her head just because she can take part in a mediocre theatre play to the playful infant Sunny who has her very own language and bites everything, this book was a chaotic and fanciful jumble of weirdness and absurdity.