The Penultimate Peril

The Penultimate Peril is the twelfth book in Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, the thirteen volume children’s series written by Daniel Handler under the Lemony Snicket name. By this point in the series, the Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, are no longer the somewhat helpless children they were in the early books. They have learned more than they ever wanted to know about the secret society called VFD that their parents were part of, about the long running schism between its members, and about the moral compromises that almost everyone they encounter has had to make.

In this volume the Baudelaires arrive at the Hotel Denouement, an enormous lakeside hotel where the surviving members of VFD on both sides of the schism are converging for what may be a final confrontation. The hotel is staffed and managed by triplets, the manager has a strange neutral position in the wider conflict, and the children find themselves disguised as concierges and trying to gather intelligence on which guests are noble and which are villainous. The catch is that by this point in the series, the distinction between noble and villainous has become much more difficult than the early books made it seem. Almost everyone the children encounter has a reason for the choices they have made, and almost no one is purely on either side.

Lemony Snicket’s narrative voice continues its characteristic running commentary throughout, addressing the reader directly, defining unusual vocabulary, warning about the bleakness of what is coming, and offering the kind of melancholy wisdom that has made the series memorable. The Brett Helquist illustrations add to the atmosphere with their high contrast Edwardian style.

For readers who have been with the series from The Bad Beginning forward, The Penultimate Peril sets up the final book, The End, with a sense that the long arc is finally about to resolve. Some plot lines from earlier volumes pay off here. Others remain unresolved into the final book. New readers should start at the beginning to get the full effect.