Book Review: The Hostile Hospital (A Series of Unfortunate Events #8)

The Hostile Hospital (#8)
by  Lemony Snicket
Date Read:  7/30/15
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

These books are final getting good!  Snicket has finally mixed up his formula and it’s very refreshing!  In this book, the Baudelaire orphans are on the run, on their own. There is no obnoxious guardian with some sort of flaw.  The kids even got split up and it was up to Klaus and Sunny to save Violet.

I really liked that the kids had to fend for themselves. The tired formula of an annoying guardian somewhere remote, Olaf in disguise, Olaf getting away, was getting very tiring. And even though Olaf was in disguise in this book, he wasn’t really the one they were running from – it was a whole band of baddies in Olaf’s camp.  Annoying Esme Squallor shows back up also.  I wonder what happened to Jerome!

The Volunteers Fighting Disease song would get stuck in our heads (we listened to the audiobook).  I can’t say enough how much I like Tim Curry as the narrator over Lemony Snicket. This booked move along really quickly. We got a surprise when they found page 13 of the Snicket file.

It seems like we’re starting to get small pieces of the story and I’m really excited to see where it keeps going.  You have to kind of force your way through those first 6 books where you don’t get much. I think Snicket could have easily cut out 4 or 5 books from this series and still tell his tale – but I know, I know, he wanted to get to 13 books.  If you’ve started reading this series and gotten bored around book 5 and stopped, I urge you to push through. It gets better!