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Post by Skelly Craig on Jan 5, 2014 20:00:32 GMT -5
'Where Is That Smoke Coming From?' sounds like a great candidate for a title, agathological.
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Post by The Duchess on Jan 5, 2014 20:09:21 GMT -5
Or maybe "do you smell smoke?"
From TUA
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Post by bandit on Jan 5, 2014 20:25:17 GMT -5
It's the third book that'll have the arson, with the inference that the fourth book will have a murder (this still seems funny to me, though, because ASoUE had a death in almost every book). Perhaps the title will be "Whodunnit?"
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Post by The Duchess on Jan 5, 2014 20:26:24 GMT -5
"Do you smell blood?"
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Post by Skelly Craig on Jan 5, 2014 22:58:02 GMT -5
Duchess, with the first titles being "Who Could That Be..." and "When Did You See..." it's more than likely that the remaining two books will continue using Wh-questions, "Where" and "What" and "Why" still being left.
Also, bandit, I think that's why ATWQ is being marketed at a slightly younger audience than ASoUE (or vice versa).
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Post by Dante on Jan 6, 2014 4:10:30 GMT -5
I think the differing treatment of murder between the two series is partly because ATWQ is more mystery-oriented whereas the murders in ASoUE were never mysterious at all and often treated quite lightly - Uncle Monty's death is treated as both a mystery and a tragedy, but I'm struggling to think of a later murder which isn't obviously Olaf's work, and quite frequently characters are just casually offed off-screen (Foreman Firstein, Miss Tench). ATWQ, with its emphasis on a single crime per book, can't have loads of murders without undermining the weight of the crime, I think, but it's also likely that the murder in question will be a much bigger deal and its mystery will occupy a greater page count than those in ASoUE. If anything, just having one murder might make ATWQ more serious than ASoUE rather than less.
As for titles for later books in the series - I have this almost certainly incorrect theory that the titles are decreasing in word count by one per book (?1's title had seven words, ?2's six), so I like to think that ?3's title will have five letters and ?4's four. This also has the effect of quite likely giving ?4 an incredibly blunt title as part of its joke - I'm envisaging something like "What Do You Want?", and it's funny to think of people having to walk into bookstores and ask for that.
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Post by Agathological on Jan 6, 2014 13:26:56 GMT -5
'Where Is That Smoke Coming From?' sounds like a great candidate for a title, agathological. Cheers. What in Stain'd by the Sea would be a potential arson target? Probably the library, however the first book mentions Lemony starts the fire so why would he investigate his own arson? Most likely it will be Ink Inc; that is only the significant building in Stain'd |
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Post by Dante on Jan 6, 2014 15:10:59 GMT -5
?2 makes a point of how Qwerty's been receiving threats to the library, and they may have been arson threats as he had sprinklers installed precisely to avoid fire. So I suspect that ?2 may at least start out with Lemony investigating this threatened arson, and the arson itself occurs later. Strictly speaking, Lemony only says that he "destroyed" the library, but if arson is the motif of the book, and certainly it's a motif of Snicket, then it's likely to end up being arson - somehow.
Lemony's been getting too popular in Stain'd - helping out so many people, probably now becoming trusted by the police after handing them Flammarion and Dander and publicly solving Cleo Knight's disappearance... Being somehow responsible for burning down the library would put a real dampener on his reputation leading into the final book. In fact, that might very well be exactly what Hangfire wants.
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Post by Agathological on Jan 7, 2014 16:43:31 GMT -5
On a closer read of the second book I feel that the Wade Academy will be a central part of the third; the way it is mentioned like we should know about it (much like Geraldine Juliene) seems like hint enough that it will be elaborated on; most likely the arson attack?
I wish we had a map of Stain'd; looking at the map in the UAB I tried to imagine where all the places going in relation to it; it's such an elaborate world I wish we had a little context...
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Post by Dante on Jan 7, 2014 16:59:54 GMT -5
I agree that a visit to the Wade Academy is probably coming up; it was mentioned in ?1, but the allusions in ?2, as I recall them, definitely seemed designed to keep it on the edge of our awareness. Well, I think we can expect any major location to be visited at some point. Everywhere Snicket visits in the early chapters of ?2 is first mentioned in ?1 (Hungry's, the grocery store, Ink Inc.'s pen-shaped tower)... I think the only places he hasn't visited are the Wade Academy on Offshore Island and the Clusterous Forest.
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Post by Agathological on Jan 7, 2014 17:03:50 GMT -5
And Dicey's Department Store (though Cleo did go there for Ellington)
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Post by Ennui on Feb 19, 2014 7:55:17 GMT -5
Typically late to the party - but I got my hands on this a few days ago, just finished it, and will try and get some impressions down here as quick as feasible!
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Post by Hermes on Feb 19, 2014 8:29:01 GMT -5
Welcome back, Ennui!
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Post by Dante on Feb 19, 2014 9:54:23 GMT -5
Good to hear from you, Ennui, and I'll look forward to reading your response.
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Post by Ennui on Feb 21, 2014 5:53:24 GMT -5
OK, first, a basic structural thing.
Usually, in books half way through a series, one should prepare for misery, tribulation, villains in the ascendant, and so on. ASOUE conformed to these expectations - where it differed was rather in keeping misery at beginning and end, too! ATWQ, as or even more daringly, though, has dealt us that very unusual thing - a relatively upbeat vol. 2.
Snicket remains on the initiative and the attack, and, in fact, barking up the right tree more often than not. He even manages a successful encounter with Hangfire himself (about which I'm a bit sceptical - I don't think you should cheapen encounters with a mysterious, dark master-villain with too much quantity or triviality. It's a mistake Rowling makes, for example, and Tolkien doesn't). At the end he and Widdershins are basically proactive, if uncertain, about the future. It couldn't be more different from the marvellous, ambiguous, total breakdown / disorder at the end of vol. 1.
This book barely feels as if Snicket asked a wrong question at all. However: things are surely not that simple.
First, the price at which Lemony's success appears to have come is the abandonment of his sister in a moment of disaster for her muted sub-plot (so subdued indeed as barely to be that - I feel it would better be described musically - a countertheme, or something?)
Second, the victory is unstable precisely because of its position in the series. We can't know yet if Snicket's apparent coup against Flammarion etc may not prove be equally or more disastrous as letting sleeping dogs lie (the older generation, especially Theodora's, half-conscious tactic).
Third - what on earth is up with the McGuffin? I expect you've all done this to death, but it's quite simply baffling. A combination of suspension of disbelief, and ingenuity, had persuaded us, as far as I could tell, that the absurd and irritatingly named Bombinating Beast statuette was indeed really really important, and perhaps something to do with that question mark. And yet, in this book, Hangfire apparently can't be bothered to pick it up when it's specifically, and to his knowledge, at his mercy; and Ellington and Lemony toss it about like a frisbee. Something is very very fishy here. This is an intentional mystery, I'm sure, not a plot-chasm.
More to come!
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