"The Penultimate Peril (ASoUE Book the Twelfth)" by Lemony Snicket

"The Penultimate Peril" (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the Twelfth)

Author: Lemony Snicket

Publishing Date: October 2005

Source: The library of Cousin Malkin.

Website: Lemony Snicket

I know I said I was supposed to write about "Wicked", but Cousin lent me this book before I could finish my notes for "Wicked", so I decided to post about this one first.

Synopsis: Book the Twelfth tells the story of what happens to the Baudelaire orphans when a mysterious woman brings them to the Hotel Denouement and assigns them some volunteer work: to masquerade as concierges and find out the identity of a certain "J.S.", and to keep a look-out for the arrival of the legendary VFD sugar bowl.

Favorite Quote

A great man once said that right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. - Kit Snicket

Real-life Connections

Well, the Hotel Preludio is a lovely place, but the Hotel Denouement is more than that. For years, it's been a place where our volunteers can gather to exchange information, discuss plans to defeat our enemies, and return books we've borrowed from one another. Before the schism, there were countless places that served such purposes. Bookstores and banks, restaurants and stationery stores, cafés and laundromats, opium dens and geodesic domes -- people of nobility and integrity could gather nearly everywhere.

The term "geodesic dome" caught my eye immediately. That term is right up my alley, being a geodetic engineer, and all. However, it's nothing too technical. It's simply this. :p

The Hotel Denouement was organized according to the Dewey Decimal System. Rooms are assigned based on what their corresponding category in the system is. The concept sounds ridiculous, but I immediately recalled a Discovery Travel and Living Channel documentary about unusual hotels, and there is one just like it in New York. The Library Hotel.

The publishers, through Amazon, are propagating an unfortunate divination device: The Misfortune Teller.

Insights: The most striking theme of the story for me revolves around the question "What determines nobility and who is and who isn't noble?". One can get a headache trying to recognize who is noble and who isn't among the characters (past and new) who congregate at the Hotel Denouement for the denouement (which here means "the unraveling or discovery of a plot") of some of the secrets of VFD. If you do an unnoble deed for a noble cause, what does that make you? That's the big question the Baudelaires will have to answer as they sail into the 13th and final book.

Review: Although the book boasts of some very interesting stuff like the Hotel Denouement itself, the Denouement triplets, Kit Snicket, the supposed arrival (but non-appearance) of the sugar bowl, an insight into the past of the Baudelaire parents and their connection to Count Olaf's past, and the return of many previous villains and volunteers, the book is too long for a story that does not necessarily advance the plot much. There were a lot of parts that could have done with some trimming (although readers should be used to Lemony Snicket's style by now), and I honestly skipped several parts because it just got too redundant. The whole book, trimmed down to its bare essentials, could easily fit into the plot of either Book the Eleventh or Book the Thirteenth. Maybe the title should've been "The Trivial Twelfth". :p Despite all that, I still enjoyed parts of the book, and needless to say, it is a must-read for all ASoUE fans, and Baudelaire sympathizers. :p

Rating (out of 5 dreamcatchers)