Reality Bypass

Book Review: Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson July 7, 2010

Hey folks!  Hope everyone in the stats had a great 4th of July weekend.  For our family it was a time of fireworks, memories and really good food.  Beyond that we also finished the book we’ve been reading together, Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, so I decided it would be a good review today.

We’ve been reading Alcatraz a chapter at a time for about the last 2-3 months.  My husband is our reader and myself and our two boys, ages 9 and 13, are the erstwhile listeners.  To give credit where it is due I think part of the joy of this reading is listening to my husband who is a very good reader and creator of various voices, but it certainly helps that the story he was reading was a delight in and of itself.  Alcatraz is told from a first person point of view, but it’s from a future version of Alcatraz looking back to tell how his story got started.  The narration is irreverent, humorous and filled with delightful forshadowing of upcoming events in completely unexpected ways.  Sometimes a rutabaga is far more than just a rutabaga.

Alcatraz himself is a character walking the line of deciding what kind of person he is going to be.  He addresses the bad things he does with the same honesty that he acknowledges bravery and love.  He’s a boy who has been raised in the foster system and who has an unnatural ability to break everything he touches.  Come to find out that the ability is a Talent and his whole family has them.  His thirteenth birthday begins with a present in the mail, the arrival of his grandfather, who has the Talent to be late, and a gun toting librarian because…of course…the world is not what we think it is and Alcatraz is thrust into the middle of a war between the Hushlands and the Free Kingdoms all while learning more about himself, his talent and what it means to be a family.

The book was delightful.  Some folks might get annoyed with the interjections by the narrator and moments when he’s purposefully poking fun at writing conventions, but I found them hysterical.  The language of the book is very accessible for middle grade readers and young adults, but there are enough twists to how the language is used that adults can be delighted by a whole other level of what’s going on.

We’re buying book two and three now cause we have to know what happens next to the boy that breaks things and his family.  And we’re still curious about the sacrifice on a stack of outdated encyclopedias!

Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians

Genre: Modern Fantasy

Age: 8+

Content: Minor violence

Overall: 5/5 paws