Clocking up a whopping 337 pages, The Slippery Slope is the longest volume in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events so far, but Book the Tenth reads so easily and is so entertaining that it actually feels half that length. With only three more books to go now before this popular saga ends, probably miserably, there is now much more of a sense of a single over-arching storyline that is heading towards big revelations and cataclysmic conclusions. All the familiar, well-loved elements of a Lemony Snicket adventure are here again, and the action picks up where it left off at the end of Book the Ninth, The Carniverous Carnival. Violet and Klaus, the oldest of the three Baudelaire orphans, are plummeting down a mountainside in an out-of-control caravan, certain to be smashed to smithereens at any second. Travelling up the mountain in a car is their youngest sibling, Sunny, who has been kidnapped by Count Olaf, his girlfriend Esme Squalor, and their scurrilous sidekicks. Olaf, as ever, is evil and mean and never lets up in his desire to snatch the children's inherited fortune. He really is a villain with a one-track mind.
Violet and Sunny set about saving themselves, then their sister, and then navigating through the Mortmain Mountains to stop their nemesis from committing more really bad deeds. The plotline is as tortured, hilarious and annoying as ever--with tangents explored at every turn--but it's so good nobody will really mind. There are tantalising clues that hint at a Baudelaire parent being alive after all, more possibilities about the secret organisation VFD and help from an unexpected ally.
The author is more careful than ever, now that he is down to writing only one bumper book a year, to give fantastic value for money. The gag quotient per page is stunningly high, and consistently good. The Grim Grotto cannot arrive a moment too soon. (Age 9 and over) --John McLay
