The vile village

 Series: A series of unfortunate events #7 

Author: Lemony Snicket

Genre: Children, Fantasy

Original publication date: April 24, 2001

Book description: 

Dear Reader,

You have undoubtedly picked up this book by mistake, so please put it down. Nobody in their right mind would read this particular book about the lives of Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire on purpose, because each dismal moment of their stay in the village of V.F.D. has been faithfully and dreadfully recorded in these pages. I can think of no single reason why anyone would want to open a book containing such unpleasant matters as migrating crows, an angry mob, a newspaper headline, the arrest of innocent people, the Deluxe Cell, and some very strange hats. It is my solemn and sacred occupation to research each detail of the Baudelaire children's lives and write them all down, but you may prefer to do some other solemn and sacred thing, such as reading another book instead.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Thoughts:

I should not complain anymore about the same things really. But this book series always angers me. The adults in each place the Baudelaire orphans end up are the worst kind of people, very illogical, unreasonable, and just plain dumb. 

We follow the children as they are placed in the are of an entire village. There seems to be a program in which children are taken by a place rather than a person. The Village V.F.D. are picked by them from the list of places to be. The reason is obvious the V.F.D. is the secret their dear friends mentioned while Count Olaf took them captive. 

The children again are taken as slaves or free manual labor for menial tasks that the villager could not be bothered with. The book has an absurdist style I dislike at the moment. Maybe it is that when I was growing up I could accept the absurd ideas as difficulties or just that as a reader my taste has changed. But the absurd and illogical attitude the characters show anger me. The rules V.F.D. are hilarious if you see them in any other context. Completely irrational rules and the punishment is even more so. The people see everything in black and white to the extreme, if anything breaks the rules in any way people are held responsible t be burned at the stake, as that is the punishment for breaking each rule no exception. 

Crazy!

The children see it, the people living there do not. 

There is as usual a single adult who sympathizes and appreciates the children. He is the handyman for the village but he is so afraid of the rest of the people he doesn't really speak up or even help the children. So again we have their only ally be completely useless. We find the disguised Olaf, a few of his lackeys and the village does not listen to reason as it does not align with their own set mentality of how the world works.

**Slight spoilers ahead, very mild** 

The idea that the children could have valuable information, the fact that they know the man that has been chasing them for weeks trying to kill them. No, they find the guilty party and then completely disregard the children when they inform them that the man they caught is the wrong man.

**End of mild spoilers**

This is a very interesting book, again I did not finish this when I was growing up so by now every book is new. I was not sure how many I had read and as I began the first ones, some vague memories came back as I read along but in the last few books I find everything so surprising! 

The ending of this book I am a bit unsure, but I think this is the part where the children stop the jumping from caretaker to caretaker by Mr. Poe and decide to go off on their own. not sure, in the end, the children are left standing in the V.F.D. village after Olaf once more escapes. This last one is not something I consider a spoiler, Olaf is always going to run as long as there is a next book in the series really. 

I am looking forward to reading the next one in the series. It is a very formulaic book like it happens in many children's series. But I still find myself eager to jump to the next one, I do need to find out the ending once and for all for the Baudelaire children and what is VFD and the big secret the triplets have mentioned in the last few books. 

This series is complete in Scribd that's where I have been reading it the last couple of months. I had the intention of buying it but the online places I have looked have it a bit expensive and I really wanted the 12 books to match so I have yet to buy a copy for my own. But I have put off reading the complete series for way too long. I am no longer going to wait. 

Feel free to use the referral code: https://www.scribd.com/g/72ocvr

With this, you get a 60-day free trial period and you can then purchase your subscription at approx $8.99 per month. You do not get any extra charge if you use this code, I do get a reward of a 30-day free period if you join using my code. 

I have been using Scribd for a year or more by now I really enjoy it. You can get access to a few audiobooks per month and tons of ebooks. Be aware that audiobooks are limited (you get I believe 2 per month), at least the most popular books or authors, a few older ones are available to hear as many as you want. The ebooks so far I have seen do not have a limit to how many you read in a single month.

That is it for now, see you guys later. Stay healthy, stay safe!