The Miserable Mill

3:

Utterly shocked and flabbergasted at the fact that these children have now witnessed a woman being cut in half by a giant saw blade, right after she'd dueled and tried to slice the throat of our Sunny, who is checks notes one year old.

This was awful I'm so mad! There wasn't a single silver lining or a moment of comfort anywhere in this book, it was all bleak bleak. Lemony Snickett warned you yadda yadda I don't care! I'm sad for my children!!

Although now we've stepped away from the well-meaning, but hopelessly incompetent guardians the kids have been entrusted to so far, I absolutely loathed seeing them join the workforce and I hated Sir and Charles was just annoying. Phil was okay-ish, though. And say whatever you want, but Olaf and his cronies are nothing if not versatile. Shirley was a hoot, I'll miss you girl you'd make a terrible receptionist xoxo.

This books are always fun to read.

The very very slight storyline formula change up was okay, and the children having to step into each other's shoes was good. Talk about morbid and gruesome too. But this book was just not very good overall.

And goodness the audiobook is so bad. Children and narrator were too quiet and the adults were so loud it could blow out your eardrum. The adult voices were incredibly annoying too. Can't wait to return to the Tim Curry narration soon.

I regret to inform you that this book series was one of my favorites when I was younger. As I revisit these books as an adult, it's become clear that I can accredit this series to many of my longheld quirks, which here means a completely morbid sense of humor and attraction to meta-references. Regardless, it surprised me to re-discover how gory and cynical these books are at heart, and yet what could I expect from a series that labels itself so blatantly as “unfortunate events?” I should have more carefully listened to Lemony Snicket's warnings ...

In all truth, A Series of Unfortunate Events is a pretty genius series and that definitely includes “The Miserable Mill.” The mystery spun through each episode of the Baudelaire orphans' journey is engaging enough, but Lemony Snicket's irreverent and witty writing style elevate these books to classic status for me. It's also impressive that the books successfully explain higher-level vocabulary and literary devices in a subtle way that builds on top of that growing mystery rather than detracting from it. “The Miserable Mill” is also where (in my opinion) the book starts to deviate from the formula established in the first three installments by forcing the Baudelaires to take up each others' strengths rather than just relying on their own. It's dark, it's intriguing, it's ridiculous and you know what? I can't wait to continue to reacquaint myself with this series.

Este libro narra la historia de tres niños huérfanos que son enviados con su cuarto tutor a un aserradero donde se encuentran con algunos problemas. La trama se plantea muy parecida a los libros anteriores , empieza cuando los niños son enviados con su nuevo tutor, luego el desarrollo abarca toda la adaptación a su nuevo “hogar”, y algunas curiosidades que van tomando forma. Y termina (no es spoiler) con un final miserable como siempre. Hasta ahora los libros como dije siguen siendo repetitivos solo en el aspecto de que siempre Count Olaf se sale con la suya y comienza todo de nuevo, pero la serie en sí, es original.

Algunas de las cosas que son más originales y me gustaron muchísimo son: primero las definiciones que realiza el autor que son, más que nada, subjetivas a la situación; así también como lo que dice Sunny o las interpretaciones de lo que dice la bebé cuando balbucea para hacerse entender.

El tema se aborda desde el entretenimiento, ya que no apunta a nada histórico o psicológico, si no una simple historia o pequeña aventura entre hermanos.


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A quick, if a little boring read in the series. I am really looking forward to later books where I remember the plot gets deeper.

I haven't read from this series in over 10 years so I decided to pick it up from where I left off. You have to hand it too Lemony Snicket his writing is one you can't forget. I'm so happy to be reading these and I shall finish the series this time around! :)

~Full series overview here on The Bent Bookworm!~Whoo-boy, here we go – The Miserable Mill picks up where The Wide Window left off, with the Baudelaires going off to yet ANOTHER guardian, this one the most mysterious and incomprehensible yet. Things are getting extremely repetitive at this point, so much so that I was tempted to not read this one. But the books are so easy to get through and so FAST to get through that I persevered.This book gives a new spin to the Baudelaires mistreatment – they actually ARE slaves in this one, for the most part! Thrown into a sweatshop/poorhouse type sawmill, they are used and abused and try to hold each other together. Hope seems to be slipping away from them as they are too exhausted to do anything at the end of the day. But then Klaus breaks his glasses and has to go see the “optometrist.” And all is not as it seems...because nothing ever is, for these kids. Of course no one believes them when they say they are being stalked. Of course no one sees anything wrong with 3 children working in a sawmill – actually, someone does, but has no guts to do anything about it, typical of the “good” adults in these stories. In the end, they of course barely escape per the usual. However, this time, the ending doesn't have them going off to another relative, it has them going somewhere else entirely, so maybe the next book will have a change in plot. I very much hope so because I really think even most children would be bored with these by now.Blog Twitter Bloglovin Instagram Google+

3.8

My least favorite ASOUE book so far. Same style, but different situations. I think the Baudelaire children can really look out for themselves, so the plot needs to get more in depth. Just like the previous book, “The Wide Window”, this series is trying to take a darker and more mature lane... so I guess children below 8 years old will not appreciate this book. Nevertheless, it was still a fun read on my part. Still charming and full of misadventures. It's interesting to see what Count Olaf is up to in the next books, so I'm really looking forward to book five - which is “The Austere Academy”.

Violet, Klaus en Sunny Baudelaire reizen per trein naar Paltryville, waar ze in de Lucky Smells Lumbermill zullen wonen. Of beter, werken, terwijl Sir (zijn echte naam is te lang om juist uit te spreken) zal proberen Graaf Olaf weg te houden. En dan is er een nieuwe voorman, Flacutono (anagram, hint, hint), en als Klaus naar de ookmeester moet wegens gebroken bril, komt hij gehypnotiseerd terug, en dan blijkt dat Shirley, de receptioniste, eigenlijk een verklede Graaf Olaf is, en dan laten ze Klaus allerlei dingen doen, en dan vindt Violet het woord om Klaus te onthypnotiseren, en is er een zwaardgevecht tussen de oogmeester en Sunny (haar tanden), en dan ontsnappen Flacutono en Olaf en moet Sir niet meer weten van de Baudelaires en moeten ze dus weer op zoek naar een nieuwe voogd.

I only gave 3 instead of 4 because the sword fighting was ridiculous

Melhor que os anteriores!
Meu problema com os anteriores é que os adultos eram tão imbecis que não conseguia abstrair.
Dessa vez os adultos são tão, mas tão caricatos, que foi fácil abraçar a idéia que são apenas personagens :D

What a waste!, The first three books in the series made me to think that it would make such a great book for children. But the ‘The Miserable Mill' is sure a miserable one in the way the story being portrayed.
Sunny made a sword fight with her teeth?
Klaus pulled the log with chewed gum?
Sunny scrubbed the branches off from the tree with her teeth?

What a stupidity!

If the above things were true then the story should be in fantasy but it isn't. I will never recommend this series atleast beginning from the ‘The Miserable Mill', or atleast ‘The Miserable Mill' to anyone.
To be sure I will never read it again, if I did then I would be perfectly out of sense, the word ‘perfectly' here means ‘absolute stupidity'.

Once again Snicket keeps the same basic formula, but changes it just enough to keep it interesting. I have to respect him for this. Too often in children's literature, the storyline is repeated again and again and when a change does occur, it often lacks originality. Snicket does a great job breathing new life into a series that could grow old very fast. I am excited to see, now that he's tapped most of the new-guardian/Count-Olaf-in-disguise angles, how he might shake it up, or take the story in a completely different direction. Snicket's good at this, and I expect that despite the length of the series, he has no trouble finding fresh, new perspectives.

The Miserable Mill shook the pattern established in the previous books a little, but it wasn't vastly different. The change was enough to keep me going, but to make it through a fifth book, Snicket will have to make some bolder moves (I trust he will). This fourth book in the series is lightly humorous, but not as funny as books 2 and 3, in my opinion. The story lacks the drive of books 1 and 3. None of the extra characters in The Miserable Mill were as developed as they had been in any of the previous books and this was disappointing: Phil had definite potential, and Charles and Sir were little more than cardboard people used to further the plot. Despite the negatives, The Miserable Mill was a more rounded book than books 1 and 2; therefore, I'd say The Miserable Mill is the second best in the series so far, but barely.

A Series of Unfortunate Events:
The Bad Beginning – 3.1
The Reptile Room – 3.2
The Wide Window – 3.6
The Miserable Mill - 3.3

As with the rest of Lemony Snicket's novels, this one was horribly depressing but a fun read nonetheless. I love his use of vocabulary and ridiculous definitions. I even remember enjoying this particular aspect when I read the books back in middle school, some 8 or so years ago.