Book the Tenth is a Slippery Slope
leading to The End
The Slippery Slope by Daniel Handler
Some authors write books that stand alone even in the midst of a lengthy series. Then there is Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket who ties the novels in A Series of Unfortunate Events so closely together that they could almost be looked upon as a single, long chronicle.
The Slippery Slope, Book the Tenth, picks up immediately where Book the 9th (The Carnivorous Carnival) left off. In fact, if you haven't read that book first, this book could prove confusing and will definitely have a lot of spoilers.
Where does it start? It starts with Sunny in the literal clutches of Esme Squalor, crying and getting pinched during Count Olaf and his crew's drive up Mount Mortmain to the VFD headquarters. Her siblings, Violet and Klaus, are hurdling back down the hill in an uncontrolled caravan that is about to get sent off a cliff.
Thankfully, Violet's inventing skills and Klaus' reading and memory skills once again come through and they're able to save themselves from otherwise certain death.
At 337 pages, The Slippery Slope is a thicker tome than many of the earlier installments and one in which many things happen. Sunny really starts to come into her own during The Slippery Slope. She discovers talents beyond biting things. Her cooking skills are quite amazing for a toddler who can barely speak. Even the latter is undergoing changes. Sunny is on her own this time and the readers can usually puzzle out what she is saying even without the translations of her older siblings.
When Violet and Sunny are briefly reunited, Sunny is able to point out that she isn't an infant any longer, that she's become a young girl who is starting to show the same independence and self-reliance of her older siblings.
Violet is also growing up. The Slippery Slope brings in a romantic interest for her. Lemony Snicket handles this romance in a most tender fashion. He talks about all the things that the orphans have lost and says one of the things that is least talked about is their privacy. Since they have had so much of it taken away, he chooses to give them the gift of refusing to write about what happens when Violet gets a few quiet hours alone with her romantic interest. Instead, he just refers to their small, secret smiles.
There is also the re-emergence of a character from an earlier book — young Carmelita Spats from The Austere Academy. She's back in full glory, eager to be the False Spring Queen. Her Uncle Bruce is leading the Snow Scouts up to the mountain to crown the False Spring Queen. He's a blustering fellow who leads all of the scouts in a most ridiculous and amusing alphabet pledge.
We also meet for the first time two new villains, villains who frighten even Count Olaf and Esme Squalor: The man with a beard but no hair and the woman with hair but no beard. Like Voldemort in the Harry Potter series, everyone is too frightened to say their names.
The Slippery Slope explores several themes that recur throughout the series. Whereas the children have been forced to do many things in the name of survival, they now must question just how far the ends justify the means. They question whether they are turning into the very villains that they're running away from. There is a wonderful discussion between Klaus, Violet, and their new friend (whom I won't name lest I spoil the surprise) about whether they should fight fire with fire to rescue Sunny and stymie the villains. Eventually they conclude, "If everyone fought fire with fire, the entire world would go up in smoke."
Instead, they look to the VFD motto, "The world is quiet here," and reflect on whether that might guide their actions.
The new friend also talks about one way they can determine who to trust and who not to trust. Is the person well-read? That might not keep him or her from being a villain, but, he says, people who are well read can generally be trusted.
Codes have been present in the series since The Wide Window and The Slippery Slope reveals yet another type of secret messages that the volunteers use: Verbal Fridge Dialogue.
The Slippery Slope is one of the better books in the series. It has a quick moving plot, lots of quirkiness, and explores difficult questions of ethics and morality. In all, it's a winner.
