Evil Librarians? Arriving late is considered an amazing power? Alcatraz Smedry is asking himself all these questions and more in Brandon Sanderson’s book Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians. Alcatraz is an orphan that has been shuffled from foster home to foster home. He has the inexplicable ability to break anything. He doesn’t try to, whatever he touches just seems to break, from pots to door handles to desks. One day he receives a mysterious package with a note that says the contents are his inheritance. All he finds inside is a bag of sand. After he burns down his latest foster family’s kitchen, he receives an unexpected visitor, a strange looking old man who claims to be his grandfather. The old man asks about the sand. Alcatraz tries to find it, but it has been stolen. Soon thereafter a librarian comes to visit Alcatraz and his grandfather, and almost shoots them. As so begins the quest to regain Alcatraz’s inheritance.
The book is an adventure in the unexpected. Things that you and I think to be faults are talents and advanced technology is brushed off as primitive, while what we consider ancient it revered as the height of technology. The best part is the commentary that the author directs at the reader. It is hilarious and random and totally unexpected. This book will keep you laughing.
–reviewed by Amanda