| The End (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 13) | 
 enlarge | Author: Lemony Snicket
Creators: Brett Helquist, Michael Kupperman
Publisher: HarperCollins
Category: Book
List Price: $12.99
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You Save: $12.73 (98%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (306 reviews)
Sales Rank: 6776
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.1 x 1.3
ISBN: 0064410161
EAN: 9780064410168
ASIN: 0064410161
Publication Date: October 13, 2006
Release Date: October 13, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Dear Reader, You are presumably looking at the back of this book, or the end of the end. The end of the end is the best place to begin the end, because if you read the end from the beginning of the beginning of the end to the end of the end of the end, you will arrive at the end of the end of your rope. This book is the last in A Series of Unfortunate Events, and even if you braved the previous twelve volumes, you probably can't stand such unpleasantries as a fearsome storm, a suspicious beverage, a herd of wild sheep, an enormous bird cage, and a truly haunting secret about the Baudelaire parents. It has been my solemn occupation to complete the history of the Baudelaire orphans, and at last I am finished. You likely have some other occupation, so if I were you I would drop this book at once, so the end does not finish you. With all due respect, Lemony Snicket
Amazon.com Review
Picking up from the final pages of the Pentultimate Peril, this farewell installment to the ridiculously (and deservedly!) popular A Series of Unfortunate Events places our protagonists right where we last left them: on a large, wooden boat in the middle of the ocean, trapped with their nemesis Count Olaf, who has armed himself with a helmet-full of deadly Medusoid Mycelium. The situation quickly and--this being the Baudelaires--predictably deteriorates. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny find themselves tossed in a storm so terrible that our beloved narrator spends four pages describing how he cannot describe it. From this point on, fans of the series' smarty-pants wordplay and acrobatic narrative can rest assured that they're in for more of the same (and how) in this 368-page finale, and Daniel Handler's deadpan Snicket continues to tutor a generation in self-referential humor (including one particularly funny bit regarding three very short men carrying a large, flat piece of wood, painted to look like a living room). Snicket notes, of course, that if you read the entire series, "your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes." There's one big question, though, for anyone who's made it through "the thirteenth chapter of the thirteenth volume in this sad history": is the final book a fitting end? That question is probably best-answered by one of The End's most oft-repeated phrases: It depends on how you look at it. Those looking for conclusive resolution to the series' many, many mysteries may be disappointed, although some big questions do get explicit answers. Not surprisingly for a work so deliberately labyrinthine, though, even the absence of an answer can be sort of an answer--and reaction to The End can be something of a Rorschach test for readers. Or, as Lemony Snicket says, "Perhaps you don?t know yet what the end really means." --Paul Hughes
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| Customer Reviews: Read 301 more reviews...
 Great book, came in plenty of time for my purposes January 6, 2009
This book came well within the time frame specified, in plenty of time for me to wrap and send out as a requested Christmas gift. It was in good shape and didn't smell, as some books have that I have purchased from others. The packaging was appropriate for the product and it arrived non damaged. Thanks for a great purchase!
An incredible ending to an incredible series January 1, 2009
Clearly, this is not an ending that everyone "agrees" with. It's not terribly surprising, in fact Lemony Snicket has often warned his readers that those looking for happy endings should look elsewhere. But the main reason people seem to be dissapointed is that he doesn't unveil the meaning behind many of the mysteries that he's created. But that's what I like most about it. Most of the answers can be found if you simply read all of his books a little more carefully. For example, he doesn't say exactly what's in the sugar bowl, but if you read the Unauthorized Autobiography, and some of the other books that mention the sugar bowl, you can get a pretty good idea of what it contains. In fact this book gives a pretty big hint that most people seem to miss...
The bottom line is, if you don't appreciate The End, then you really don't appreciate any of the books. The whole point of the Lemony Snicket books is that it teaches us that, unlike fairy tales, there are very few happy endings in life. In fact there are no endings. Just a series of moments- some bad, some good. There are many mysteries in the world, and it's the most important ones that there doesn't seem to be answers to. That's what The End is all about. And that's what makes it so beautiful. Thankfully the big question is answered- you do find out just who Beatrice is.
In my opinion this is the greatest series of books ever written. Lemony Snickey (aka Daniel Handler) is one of the greatest writers alive today, and this book is proof of that. The End was never going to please everyone, no matter how he wrote it. It may not answer all of your questions, but it'll make you want to go back and read the series again to find the answers. There all there, you just have to look.
 A waste of your time.... December 13, 2008
I have the complete set and have read each book thinking that surely the books would get better... unfortunately, I found that they were a complete waste of my time.
The events conclude with characters alive and fully realized! December 2, 2008
I finished this late last night, having reached that point of no return (here meaning "that point where my need to know what happens at the end overwhelms my need for sleep") that all good mysteries, and most good books, will reach sometime before the last page.
Not all the mysteries are resolved, but the book ends, as most good books do, with the main characters not just alive, but fully realized and ready to live on to face more adventures, armed with their moral compasses and skills honed in the solitude of the arboretum and rested during the respite on the island alone with baby Beatrice.
Followed by: The Beatrice Letters (A Series of Unfortunate Events)--sorta. The letters are kind of supporting materials to the end game, which might be read before or after The End, that will be read by hard core fans but can realistically be skipped by everyone else without missing anything essential to the story.
 An unfortunate end... November 28, 2008
I was disappointed. I will admit I own all the books. I enjoyed the series. However, I guess I wanted more to this ending and actually all the books. He wants everything to be sneaky and unknown. Yet, I felt like there were so many unanswered questions and the explanations we did get were kind of, well, lame.
I am not sure whether to recommend it or not. If you are like me and have to finish reading a series once you have started them, read it. If not, well...you may not be missing anything.
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