Product Description

The three Baudelaire orphans, Violet, Klaus and little Sunny, arrive at the Prufrock Preparatory School, only to be met by the unpleasant bully…

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5227 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 244 pages

Amazon.co.uk Editorial Review
The Austere Academy continues Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, the deliciously morbid set of books that began with The Bad Beginning and only got worse.

In The Austere Academy, Violet, Klaus and Sunny are at first optimistic--attending school is a welcome change for the book-loving trio, and the academy is allegedly safe from the dreaded Count Olaf, who is after their fortune. Hope dissipates quickly, however, when they meet Vice Principal Nero, a self-professed genius violinist who sneeringly imitates their every word. More dreadful still, he houses them in the tin Orphans Shack, crawling with toe-biting crabs and dripping with a mysterious tan fungus. A beam of light shines through the despair when the Baudelaires meet the Quagmires, two of three orphaned triplets who are no strangers to disaster and sympathize with their predicament. When Count Olaf appears on the scene disguised as Coach Genghis (covering his monobrow with a turban and his ankle tattoo with expensive running shoes), the Quagmires resolve to come to the aid of their new friends. Sadly, this proves to be a hideous mistake.

Snicket disarms us again with his playful juxtapositions--only he can compare bombs with strawberry shortcake (both are as dangerous to make as assumptions), muse on how babies adjust developmentally to the idea of curtains, or ponder why the Baudelaire orphans would not want to be stalks of celery despite their incessant bad luck as humans. We can't get enough of this splendid series of misadventures, and can only wager that swarms of young readers will be right next to us in line for the next installment. (Ages 9 and older) --Karin Snelson, Amazon.com.

Customer Reviews

"Memento Mori"
After their extremely unfortunate stay at a disastrous mill, the three Baudelaire siblings find themselves once more without a home. And now Mr. Poe, who is the person in charge of administering their estate until Violet becomes of age, has gotten the orphans admitted to Prufrock Preparatory School. If you have read the previous books in this series, you are aware that Count Olaf, an evil man that will stop at nothing to get their fortune, has constantly harassed the Baudelaires. One of the reasons why Mr. Poe chose the school to which they are headed is that it has an advance computer system that is supposed to keep the hideous count away.

Upon their arrival at the school, Violet, Klaus and Sunny start oddities about the place, like the fact that all the buildings are shaped as gravestones and that the school motto is the one shown in the title of this review and means "Remember you will die". But these are mere nuisances that in a different situation would make the children laugh, since they had gone through much worse. Unluckily there are more important obstacles that the children have to face, like vice principal Nero, who is a very annoying and conceited man that spends almost all his time playing the violin...BADLY! He decides to send the siblings to live in the orphan shack and they also have to follow the capricious rules that govern the lives of students at Prufrock. The most important and annoying of these rules is that they have to attend daily a six-hour concert in which Nero performs with his screeching violin. The penalty for not doing that is steep: buy a bag of candy, give it to the vice principal and watch him eat it.

There are several aspects of this series that I enjoy greatly, and I found all of them in this book, making it one of the best in the series so far. One of these is the cleverly depicted characters, which have characteristics that allow Snicket to create funny situations throughout the story. In this case, we find Nero, who Snicket uses in great fashion to make us laugh. The author also has a great ability for interjecting hilarious comments that are most of times nonsense, but that work well with the tone of the story nevertheless. These also provide a nice balance with the unfortunate situations the Baudelaires go through.

Of course, Count Olaf shows his ugly face, with his continuous eyebrow, in this story, but we also get the chance to meet a couple of other very interesting characters. Like Carmelita Spats, who is the typical bully present in all schools in this planet. But the orphans also get the chance to meet other orphans, the Quagmire triplets. They only get to meet two of them though, since one of them is dead. The Quagmires also come from a wealthy family and quickly become that Baudelaires' best friends.

The new characters provide the story with more depth, and as we have seen in other children's series, like Harry Potter, the plot is starting to be more complex and elaborate. Also, the suspense level is clearly increasing and it is hard to stop between one installment and the next. If you are following this series you will not be disappointed by this episode, and if you have not read any of the books yet, I recommend that you start with "The Bad Beginning", you will not be able to stop after that.

Bad boarding school - aaaah!
If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent and resourceful children, and you might expect that they would do very well at school. Don't. For the Baudelaire's, school turns out to be another miserable episode in their unlucky lives
Truth be told, within the chapters that make up this dreadful story, the children will encounter with face snapping crabs, strict punishments, dripping fungus, comprehensive exams, violin recitals, S.O.R.E., and the metric system.
Caution! This book will terrify the guts out of chickens, adults or tiny tots! Rating for this terrifying book is 9/ 10.

A Crucial Turning Point in the Baudelaire series.
The Wide Window and Miserable Mill only really revisited the themes of the first two books, but from The Austere Academy onwards the plot really begins to find it's bearings.

In this novel we meet the two Quagmire Triplets whose experienced are not unlike those of the Baudelaires. It's still follows the pattern of the previous three books, flawed adults that persistently disbelieve the kids until the last minute, and Olaf in yet another ridiculous disguise, but the introduction of the Quagmires starts the ball rolling with a story arc that makes all subsequent novels a series of masterpieces.

If you haven't read any of the Lemony Snicket novels before (in which case you should really start with "Bad Beginning") he has a witty style that never talks down to his audience. Though he often explains any words or phrases that might not be in the younger readers vocbulary but always does so in a humourous (sometimes quite darkly so) way, that makes each explanation a joy to anyone who like Klaus Baudelaire already know what that word or phrase means. I usually laugh out loud at some point reading each page including the dedication and about the author!

Lots of children's authors are likened to Roald Dahl, but none so deservedly so as Lemony Snicket.