The Austere Academy (Series of Unfortunate Events, #5)

by Lemony Snicket

In The Austere Academy, once again, the Baudelaire children are miserable. Mr Poe has apparently run out of potential family members, instead sending the children to Prufrock Preparatory - a boarding school. Considering Mr Poe explains how he's super jealous - I'm getting the feeling this was more about Mr Poe's childhood dreams than looking after the children. The children are concerned but Mr Poe assures them not to worry, Prufrock Prep has a super advanced computer that will stop Count Olaf from every getting in. How can a computer stop a person you ask? It's super advanced. Well then.

Apparently they should've invested in the super, super advanced model. Because who should appear?

Seriously you'll never guess. Count Olaf!

This time, he's in disguise as a world class gym teacher, complete with a turban (and seriously, has he been consorting, a word here that means plotting evil with other evildoers, with Quirrelmort?) and some high top running shoes.

But the school is supposed to be safe even if it looks like a graveyard and comes with a real uplifting motto - "Remember You Will Die". It only has punishments for tardiness to class (which will see your hands tied behind your back during meals), tardiness to mealtimes (which will leave you drinking without a cup) and entering the administrative building (which will leave you eating without utensils). Sunny is dismayed to find that she'll never have silverware - Vice Principal Nero, who believes himself to be a world class violinist (and is so very wrong), has hired her to be his secretary and she'll be required to enter the administrative building every day.

Then they're all dismayed when they find out where they get to stay. Their new home is the designated, Orphan Shack, complete with pinching crabs, bales of hay, some weird type of fungus that lives on the roof and drips and bright green walls with pink hearts.

But it's okay. It's not all bad because this time - they make friends! Friends with a history just as sad and terrible as their own. The Quagmire triplets - are also sad lonely orphans whose parents died in a fire and left them a large fortune. They have the Baudelaire's beat though - they lost their parents and their triplet, Quigley - leaving only Isadora and Duncan to carry on alone, forever being mistaken as twins. Duncan and Isadora, like the Baudelaire's have their own hobbies. Duncan wants to be a journalist and Isadora a poet. Both carry around reporter style notepads in order to record everything that is of importance for them.

Their new friends would never dream of letting them face Count Olaf on their own, so the whole gang pitches in to find out what his new plan is and how they can foil it. As you can probably guess, they don't succeed.

The plan this time is to make the children run endless laps at night for weeks until they're too tired to pay attention in this classes/job. When they start to fail and become the worst students in the school, Vice Principal Nero informs them that they'll be taking a test to see if they have learnt anything and will expel/fire them if they fail.

The Quagmire triplets believe one should know thy enemy and while the Baudelaire's have been occupied running laps, they spend time in the library scouring old newspapers for any information on Count Olaf and his gang. They mention that they find something out but with the clock ticking they brush it aside so as to come up with a plan to pass the tests.

They end up coming up with a plan for the Quagmire triplets to take their place running laps and for the Baudelaire's to study everything they need to know from the Quagmire triplet's reporter notepads.

But the Quagmire Triplets get caught up with helping and fall into Count Olaf's clutches themselves. I mean, it's not a terrible idea to abduct them. They also have a huge fortune. But they don't have the background with him yet so Count Olaf has a way better chance of getting his plan to succeed.

And so the Baudelaire's last see the Quagmire triplets being forced into a car before Count Olaf spirits them away. But they manage to tell the Baudelaire's one last thing - VFD.

Which means absolutely nothing to them and they have no idea where to start looking.

So the children are expelled, miserable and left with a mystery - what do the letters VFD stand for and why are they so important?

3 stars.