The Grim Grotto

If you're reading this review, you are most likely familiar with Lemony Snicket's 10 previous audiobooks chronicling the many misfortunes of the Baudelaire orphans. To be sure, listeners should start from the beginning and savor the whole series. In this eleventh adventure, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire meet up with the crew of the submarine QUEEQUEG in their continued quest to elude Count Olaf, find a missing sugar bowl, and avoid deadly mushrooms. Snicket does not talk down to his intended audience, and the story is filled with clever wordplay and authorial asides. However, there is also a repetitiveness that the audio format may exacerbate, a word which here means that adults may tire of hearing Captain Widdershins say "aye" and "He (or she) who hesitates is lost" over and over and OVER again, even when Tim Curry delivers it in a delightful, completely unselfconscious brogue. And Curry is a delight--both sympathetic to the orphans' plights and worryingly gleeful as the villainous Count Olaf. Lovely CD packaging features atmospheric illustrations by Brett Helquist, and an enhanced CD includes an interactive game of hangman. J.M.D. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

October 1, 2004
Tim Curry, whose appropriately unctuous and sometimes slimy delivery are a hallmark of the audiobook versions of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events titles, is thankfully up to his old tricks. Curry returns on the 11th installment, The Grim Grotto, to play Snicket, Count Olaf and all the gang with welcome flair. The enhanced CD features word games, photos and artwork when played on a personal computer. Curry also returns as the linchpin on a new, multivoice recording of The Bad Beginning, the first book in the series, which ties in to the feature film release of Paramount/Nickelodeon/Dreamwork's Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. .