In this instalment, the Baudelaires are sent to a grim boarding school, make new friends for the first time since their parents’ deaths, are confronted with bullying, and must see off Count Olaf once more, but this time with more dire consequences than before.

Specifically, their new friends are Duncan and Isadora, triplets who lost their third member in a fire which also killed their parents. This is the first introduction of more sympathetic and savvy characters, but again in the form of kids, rather than adults, and without much else to distinguish them from the Baudelaires in terms of personality. However, there is some purpose to these parallels, since

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it seems to be implied that there is some implication of foul play given both their and the Baudelaires’ parents died in unexplained fires, and the VFD mystery they share with the Baudelaires presumably relates to solving the mystery in some way

. We also get hints that

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the similar demise of Beatrice, the narrator’s lost love, in a fire is likely connected in some way, since the reference to her in the narrative also mentions Olaf

. Carmelita Spats is a celebrated character, but I didn’t find much to remark upon here: her seems to be mainly just name-calling, starting demeaning chants, and other pretty standard mean-girl behaviour.

I enjoyed that we finally get some variations on the established themes and plot structures here, before the repetitions of the previous instalments get too tired out. For the first time, we see our protagonists trying a new strategy with Olaf, pretending not to see through his disguise in order to bide their time, and working collaboratively with other characters, demonstrating their development as they learn from past experience. I also appreciated that this was more realistic and more mature in tone, dialling down some of the more extreme absurdism that I found problematic in the previous instalment.

We also are first introduced to the

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VFD

mystery here, which I understand will be a key element in introducing greater complexity and a thickening plot to the series (rather than it just being repeated episodes of the new guardian/Olaf invasion/escape formula going forwards), but essentially no information has been shared about it at this point. I expect this will pay off in future instalments, but not yet.