The Carnivorous Carnival

 Series: A series of unfortunate events # 9

Author: Lemony Snicket

Genre: Fantasy, Children

Original publication date: October 17th, 2002

Book description (from Storygraph): 

Dear reader,

The word "carnivorous," which appears in the title of this book, means "meat-eating," and once you have read such a bloodthirsty word, there is no reason to read any further. This carnivorous volume contains such a distressing story that consuming any of its contents would be far more stomach-turning than even the most imbalanced meal.

To avoid causing discomfort, it would be best if I didn't mention any of the unnerving ingredients of this story, particularly a confusing map, an ambidextrous person, an unruly crowd, a wooden plank, and Chabo the Wolf Baby.

Sadly for me, my time is filled with researching and recording the displeasing and disenchanting lives of the Baudelaire orphans. But your time might be better filled with something more palatable, such as eating your vegetables, or feeding them to someone else.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

Thoughts:

As you can tell this is a book already over halfway through the series so yes spoilers coming up! This also is a very popular series that came out years ago, this one is almost 9 years old and there is a movie and a tv show so I will assume many people know the basics about it.

We start off with the Baudelaire orphans trying to infiltrate a carnival that has definitely seen better years. Its main attraction like most aspects of the series is designed to annoy. The main attraction is a show of Freaks. The aspects that catalog them as freak well, it's clearly stupid. 

One man is ambidextrous that means can use both of his hands in the same capacity and shows no dominance over one of them. Why would this be considered a Freakish thing? The second person there is a contortionist, which means she can bend her body in very unusual ways. What this means is that the people considered freaks here are not so, they simply have talents, yet they treat them as something bad and shameful. It rubs me the wrong way really. 

The owner of the carnival is a fortune teller and she has been helping Count Olaf in his scheming since the orphans stopped being in his care. Violet and Klaus are not very sure if they should believe in fortune-telling, but they need to stay in the Carnival, they just found out details about what could be included in the next reading:

-The location of the VFD's headquarters. What it really means and even more importantly someone who is thought to be dead might be alive and they might be found in said headquarters. 

In order to blend in the children disguise themselves as Freaks in order to ask for employment in the Carnival. They get hired of course. In their stay, they get to know a bit about the Freaks, the owner of the Carnival, and find a very good clue about the Snicket File.

This is not a spoiler, but things do not go according to plan. The children discover an ally in the midst of the freakshow, it turns out to be just as coward as the previous people they have encountered. They get betrayed and Olaf discovers them before they can make their escape and once more demise befalls the person before sharing what they knew about the VFD, the mysterious fire, and Count Olaf. 

The story must go on. I am growing more and more impatient, I really don't know how this will end but it has been building up so much that I think I am being set up for disappointment. 

I ended up giving this 

I enjoyed it for what it is but I am going to maybe change my mind once I get to the end.

Has anyone seen the tv show and the movie? Which one should I try to get to? I will start that until after I complete the book series but not sure if watching the movie or the tv show first. Any advice appreciated.

Stay safe and healthy, see you later!