The Reptile Room (Series of Unfortunate Events, #2)

by Lemony Snicket

Well it's still sad and depressing but at least there were no sexual overtones and less brutal violence in this installment. So win!

The second book, The Reptile Room, sees the Baudelaire siblings placed with a new distant relative - their father's cousin's wife's brother? - Uncle Monty - a herpetologist/snake scientist. Uncle Monty has a trip planned to Peru - an expedition to study snakes and find specimens for him to present at the Herpetological Society. He can't leave the children home so he plans to bring them with him. To prepare for their trip he has the Baudelaire's working on all their favourite things. Violet has to build, fix and maintain snake traps. Klaus has to read through all the Peru guidebooks and make notes. And Sunny needs to chew the long rope into small manageable pieces. Honestly the only thing I could think of at this point was - don't they have to attend school? I mean obviously not Sunny, but Violet and Klaus? It's actually starting to really bother me and I don't know how I never noticed when I first read the series.

Count Olaf makes an appearance when he turns up disguised as "Stephano" - Uncle Monty's new assistant. When he finds Monty is suspicious of him (although not for the reasons he thinks - Monty thinks he's a Herpetological Society spy, trying to preempt his findings) he kills him and comes up with the new plan to take the Baudelaire's to Peru and kill them there. Honestly I'm not really sure how he's going to get their money with that plan. But there you go.

As I said in my review for the first book; It was fast paced if sad and depressing but then you are told in the beginning that it would be so I guess it's my own fault. 3.5 stars.