A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival (Snicket)
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival, Lenomy Snicket (aka Daniel Handler), 2002
This book in the series had the worst example of a retcon, a word here that means retroactive continuity, which happens when you go back in the past and add to or change what has happened and pretend that that's the way it has been all along.
The series is filled with retcons, such as the fire with killed the Baudelaire parents was not an unfortunate event but a case of arson; Count Olaf is not a greedy villain who happened upon the Baudelaire fortune but a murderous, greedy villain who went after it from the onset; Count Olaf was not a murderous, greedy villain who went after the Baudelaire fortune but the member of a secret organization who went after members of an opposing faction of that secret organization; etc.
But this book had the most glaring retcon of all. In the middle of the book, the children see yet another eyeball, as they have seen so many in the past, but when they look upon it very closely, they realize that it isn't an eyeball at all, but rather the letters V - F - D. I had to think about that for days before I could figure out how those three letters could possibly look like an eyeball. I finally gave up and just accepted it, but it still bothered me. It wasn't until I read The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket that it became clear that the eyeball that I had been imaging in my head for NINE BOOKS -- an image which was also used in the feature film -- was WRONG.
Up until now, the two things that got me to continue with the series were the fact that my kids were reading it (and loving it) and Handler's amusing writing style, but that was almost a deal breaker.
That and the fact that the kids worry that they are starting to become the villains that the press says that they are, which might be because they are doing things like starting fires and hanging around Count Olaf too much.
This book in the series had the worst example of a retcon, a word here that means retroactive continuity, which happens when you go back in the past and add to or change what has happened and pretend that that's the way it has been all along.
The series is filled with retcons, such as the fire with killed the Baudelaire parents was not an unfortunate event but a case of arson; Count Olaf is not a greedy villain who happened upon the Baudelaire fortune but a murderous, greedy villain who went after it from the onset; Count Olaf was not a murderous, greedy villain who went after the Baudelaire fortune but the member of a secret organization who went after members of an opposing faction of that secret organization; etc.
But this book had the most glaring retcon of all. In the middle of the book, the children see yet another eyeball, as they have seen so many in the past, but when they look upon it very closely, they realize that it isn't an eyeball at all, but rather the letters V - F - D. I had to think about that for days before I could figure out how those three letters could possibly look like an eyeball. I finally gave up and just accepted it, but it still bothered me. It wasn't until I read The Unauthorized Autobiography of Lemony Snicket that it became clear that the eyeball that I had been imaging in my head for NINE BOOKS -- an image which was also used in the feature film -- was WRONG.
Up until now, the two things that got me to continue with the series were the fact that my kids were reading it (and loving it) and Handler's amusing writing style, but that was almost a deal breaker.
That and the fact that the kids worry that they are starting to become the villains that the press says that they are, which might be because they are doing things like starting fires and hanging around Count Olaf too much.
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