The book altogether failed to engage me, which is all the more disappointing because I’ve heard the series well-recommended in several quarters.  I found the writing to be snide, supercilious, and condescending to the reader—Edward Gorey, if you will, without Gorey’s sense of grotesque humor to redeem it, or perhaps a Joan Aiken manqué.  (Very manqué.)  The author, whoever he may be, behaves as though no child in the world (and possibly no adult as well) can possibly have any vocabulary worthy of mention, nor ability to see any character not drawn with the broadest of brushes.  (Not even brushes, really; he draws characters with a worn-out paint roller.)  I recommend leaving these alone and finding Aiken’s Night Birds on Nantucket or The Wolves of Willoughby Chase instead.

This one is going out of the house again quite soon, although I don’t yet know where.