Title: The Reptile Room
Author: Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
Genre: Children's, Mystery(?)
Release Date: August 25, 1999
Summary:
The book starts off with the Baudelaires traveling with Mr. Poe to their Uncle Monty's house. Uncle Monty is a herpetologist and has an entire room in his house with different reptiles in. We find out quickly that Monty's old assistant, Gustav, recently resigned and will be replaced by Stephano. The Baudelaires and Monty spend the next week preparing for a trip to Peru to study reptiles.
Stephano arrives two days before the trip and immediately the children recognize him as Count Olaf (our villain from the first book in this series "The Bad Beginning"). On top of the children recognizing him, Monty is suspicious of him as well, however, he believes Stephano to be a spy from the Herpetological Society and therefore rips up Stephano's ticket to Peru.
The morning of the trip, Stephano meets the children and lets them know he will be going to Peru. Uncle Monty is found dead in the Reptile Room by the children who quickly realize his death was no accident. All hope seems lost until while on their way to the boat, Stephano crashes into Mr. Poe.
Rating: 3/5
Review:
I think this is a good book for what it is. The pacing however was all over the place and roughly a quarter to a third of the book was spent arguing over how everyone would travel into town after Uncle Monty died. Speaking of death, I understand the premise of this series is nothing good happens to the Baudelaire children after their parents die, but we are reminded through narration of that almost every chapter. By chapter 3, we knew what was going to happen so the rest of the book was unnecessary.
