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The Carnivorous Carnival Book Review

The Carnivorous Carnival is a 2002 children’s novel by Lemony Snicket. It’s the ninth entry in this series and the weakest one so far.

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“Miracles are like meatballs,

because nobody can exactly agree

on what they are made of,

where they come from,

or how often they should appear“

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In this one, the trio arrives at a carnival where they follow Olaf and his henchmen while trying to plan their next move to uncover the secrets behind VFD and their parents. This story had a lot of potential, but simply the execution wasn’t up to par with the rest of the series. I was never particularly interested in the freaks part of the story as it felt antiquated and it brought nothing new to the carnival oeuvre of storytelling that had been done much better many times before.

I loved the beginning, that was excellent and very intriguing. It was undoubtedly a terrific hook for this book which is all the more reason why I was ultimately quite disappointed with where the book was going. However, as is the case with the beginning, the ending is also unquestionably amazing.

Olaf actually tricked the Baudelaires as he realized their masquerading, he kidnapped Sunny and the two children are after him to the mountain. That was not only a terrific, dark and twisty ending, but a great hook for the next novel, which was very much needed given how disappointed I was with the middle section of this particular book.

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Yes, this author is particularly skilled at creating great, instantly memorable moments. The moment in the van is striking, the scenes with the fortuneteller are great and of course that entire twist ending is fantastic. But as a whole, this one suffers as it’s uneven throughout, and again in the middle parts it’s weaker and honestly rather boring at times.

This time around, the kids’ inventions were far from interesting, the whole action in this story is not something to write home about and it needed higher stakes, there’s no question about it. The ending wasn’t enough to excuse an otherwise low in stakes, previously not that engaging narrative.

I also really did not care for the newly introduced characters in this book. Yes, Olivia is excellent. I was interested in her backstory quite a bit, and I wanted for her to become an ally to the children, but unfortunately the author again gave her the unfortunate role of the traitor and she died at the end of the day. That was very frustrating as the kids not getting any helpful adults on their case by now is becoming frustratingly unrealistic and honestly kind of stupid.

And Olaf himself is not that well utilized here. Yes, he ended up actually outwitting the kids in the finale, that was excellent. But he wasn’t that much present before and that bothered me, though he’s great whenever he was in the narrative, and the same goes for his girlfriend Esme.

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As for the trio, I found Sunny underutilized in this instance sadly enough as she’s just started getting great roles in the previous couple of novels. But Klaus and Violet are both great, and I appreciated how smart and daring they all were in this story. The writing is strong, the descriptions are solid and the attention to detail is admirable. The dialogue is also okay. But again, I expect more from this series by now.

The Carnivorous Carnival is definitely the weakest entry in this series so far. Yes, it’s well written, its setting is solidly utilized, the kids are great and the ending is particularly terrific and twisty, but the middle section of the book is much less involving and the new characters are nothing to write home about.