The Grim Grotto by Lemony Snicket

The Grim Grotto, by Lemony Snicket, is the eleventh book in the Series of Unfortunate Events series. The book begins immediately after the Slippery Slope. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny are still going downstream on their wooden raft, and are separated from Quigley Quagmire. The fires that Olaf set in the Carnivorous Carnival are spreading through the mountains, and the siblings are stuck as the fires are catching up to them. Luckily, they eventually hit a submarine, and after a series of questions, the captain lets them in. There, they find Captain Widdershins, Fiona (his stepdaughter), and Phil, who also worked at the Lucky Lumbermills in Paltryville. The captain says that they learned of the siblings’ difficulties through telegram, but then it suddenly broke. Violet goes to fix it, but then realizes that Olaf must be blocking communication between VFD members. The Captain states that they were on their way to find the mysterious Sugar Bowl, but doesn’t state its use. He says that it must be brought to Hotel Denouement before the next VFD meeting. Fiona states that it is probably stuck in a cave filled with Medusoid Mycelium, mushrooms that are extremely poisonous. Since the cave is very small, the children suit up and are tasked with retrieving the sugar bowl before anyone else gets to it.  

This book is very exciting. There are many plot twists, climatic events, suspicious figures, and more. I liked that the Baudelaire children are finally starting to understand that they can’t trust anyone. In the previous books, especially when they had a guardian, they would try to tell them everything in order to be saved from Olaf, but they either ended up being useless or on Olaf’s team. If you skipped some of the books in the series, this might be a little difficult to read because there are some characters that make a reappearance, but it doesn’t take up the majority of the story. I also liked that in this story, there are many other conflicts other than stopping Olaf. For example, the siblings are tasked with finding the sugar bowl without knowing what it’s used for, saving Sunny after she gets a mushroom spore in her helmet, saving VFD from Olaf, finding out what VFD actually is, and more. This makes the book more dimensional and interesting for the reader whereas in the past books, the conflict became predictable. However, the author executes this in a way that doesn’t make it overwhelming for the reader, which is great. If you liked reading the past 10 books in the Series of Unfortunate Events series, I would definitely recommend that you read this novel. I would rate this book a 9/10.

Janani Sathish Gum Spring Library