Dear readers, unless you have enjoyed the last 11 of Lemony Snicket's books you should probably just stop reading now. As we are warned every time we pick up one of these sorry tales, there is no point getting started on them if you prefer your endings to be happy (your middles and beginnings, too). But if, like me, you are up to date with the activities of the Baudelaire orphans, I'm telling you now; read Book 12, The Penultimate Peril!

I am now desperate for the last book of the series to be published, because the endings of the books are cliffhangers; you just have to read the next one, then the next one, and the next one! What all of Lemony Snicket's books have in common, is that they are all full of disastrous happenings with a trickle of happiness and hope, just enough to keep you reading until you reach the same old cliffhanger conclusion in each of the books.

In Book 12, the Baudelaires are disguised (once again), come close to victory (once again) only to be pulled (once again) further away from the end of all misery. This time it is not Count Olaf who comes close to victory. Nor is it only the orphans, but the whole VFD organisation* that is about to triumph over Count Olaf and his many partners in crime.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny have arrived at Hotel Denouement (whose rooms are organised according to the Dewey Decimal system) just before a very important meeting of the VFD and the day of the arrival of the sugar bowl"”another thing on the ever-growing list of "curiousness-holders". The Baudelaires have no close friends in the whole building, no one they can rely on or trust. Yet they have been given a job by a mysterious lady, which they intend to fulfil; a hotel full of impatient guests to scrutinise and pure enemies close at hand.

Pretending to be concierges, they spy on hotel guests to work out who is on the side of evil and who strives for good. They meet many characters from previous novels and, even though there isn't much development of the story from the previous novel, the scene is set for the final thirteenth novel.

Behind the fascinating stories, characters and word games of the Lemony Snicket novels, we find a deeper spiritual battle. Count Olaf is an evil, evil man hunting down these three orphans who are on a quest to find a safe and quiet place in the world (a phrase quoted through all of the books). They long for a resting place where enemies are no longer a problem, a place where they can live in happiness again as they once did with their parents. I myself can think of only one place to fill their needs: Heaven. The whole story line, as I see it, is a modern way to tell moral stories like those we find in the Bible. Count Olaf (The Devil) is trying to pull us away from God. Klaus, Sunny and Violet are humans in this imperfect world, committing sins as we all do. I am sure Lemony Snicket does not mean to write a story which tells the gospel in a modern way, as the famous C.S.Lewis has done in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but the fact is that it has ended up that way, and we can see it like that. I guess we will have to wait for Book 13 to see whether it turns out anything like the Bible's story of the triumph of good over evil.

All in all Lemony Snicket has not failed yet on delivering a hilarious, suspenseful, rewarding, questioning, amazing penultimate tale.

* The V.F.D. is a fictional organisation mentioned in the A Series of Unfortunate Events children’s books and Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography. Only its members know the real meaning of V.F.D., and they always give fake clues about it.
References to V.F.D. are woven into each book, and the theme has become increasingly prominent as the Baudelaire orphans grow older and more interested in V.F.D.‘s true meaning. (source: wikipedia)