Chapter-by-Chapter: The Ersatz Elevator

This post is a little bit later in the day that I’d normally have it, because I decided to squeeze in an extra blog post this morning. As most of my Chapter-by-Chapter posts go up in the afternoon I figured it made sense to make this the afternoon post, rather than the morning one.

So here we are at the sixth book in the Series of Unfortunate Events. This one being The Ersatz Elevator. I remember when I got this, or maybe it was when I read The Austere Academy and saw the name mentioned at the end. I had to look up what ersatz meant. For the record it’s ‘fake’ or ‘pretend’ which is kind of backed up by the picture on the cover of this book.

We’ve got a lovely picture here of the three Baudelaires apparently falling down a lift shaft while someone, who could almost be Count Olaf in drag stands at the top. I know it’s not Olaf in drag, though I can’t remember exactly what relation to them this woman is. I know that they are going to end up at the top of some ridiculously high building with a crazy woman and her husband.

I remember things being ‘In’ and at the time that the Baudelaires go to live with them orphans are ‘in’. I also know that red herrings come into it somewhere, though I don’t know exactly how. This book was one of my favourites when I was younger so I think that’s why I remember it more than some of the others.

In terms of the look of the rest of the cover; the spine is a sort of dark mustard colour, not attractive at all. I can’t quite make out what the border is supposed to be. It’s a dark red colour and there’s things that look like hinges in a pattern all the way down. Oh wait! I’ve just figured it out, they’re the red herrings. That took me a moment to get.

This book is also one of the longest so far, clocking in at over 250 pages. Though it still has thirteen chapters, I think as the series goes on there will be fewer of those short ten page filler chapters I’ve gotten used to in the previous books. This means I’m setting myself up for the most reading work just as I head into NaNo.


I hope you’re ready for this!