Customer Reviews

Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

First off, I should say that in my mid twenties I am a little older than the target "reading level" of this book. However, that didn't stop me from thoroughly enjoying every word of it. I am a big fan of Brandon Sanderson, and am glad to see that his writing skill can equally please readers of all ages.

Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians is the most cleverly written book I have ever had the pleasure of reading. The precisely written narration is what I enjoyed the most. Each chapter, Alcatraz (the narrator) breaks away from the story, to talk to the reader from the voice of the author. These little sections are filled with really clever tidbits that on many occasions had me laughing out loud.

The story itself is entertaining as well. True to Sanderson's form, some of the characters have a special magical "talent" that they use in very creative ways. These talents are attributes that we might not normally see as an advantage, such as always arriving late, and tripping and falling in very dramatic ways. Sanderson also does a great job sheding new light on the world we live in by comparing it to a more advanced society where light bulbs are inferior to open flames (since lights can't set things on fire) and stairs are more advanced than elevators (because you get a work out climbing them).

This is a book that I think any kid will love, with the parents enjoying it equally as much.

Alcatraz at first glance appears to be your typical teen-age boy, even if he's named after a world-famous prison. Being passed around the foster-care system hasn't helped his attitude much, though, and it seems that he brings it on himself with his terrible clutziness.

On his thirteenth birthday he gets a strange--and very old--package in the mail from his father (where is he? is he dead? is he alive? we don't know?) claiming that it contains Alcatraz's inheritance: a bag of sand. Mystified and sad, he decides to make himself some comfort food but accidentally catches the kitchen drapes on fire.

Then everything hits the fan: the sand is stolen, a man claiming to be his grandfather shows up, his foster mother wants to kick him out of the house, and a man with a gun threatens his life. Not a great way to spend a birthday, if you ask me.

But, oh, what hilarity ensues. What's great about Sanderson's stuff is that it's beyond the typical fantasy-epic-journey type story like you'd find in Paolini or MacHale. Almost the entire story takes place at the downtown library, where things aren't always what they seem. And nothing is off-limits: Sanderson makes fun of everything and it's just plain funny. Exceedingly silly, but funny for kids and grown-ups.

The characters are fun, and even the antagonists turn out to be complex people. Alcatraz in particular is an interesting character who struggles with his accident-prone nature, until he learns it's a 'Talent' (his grandfather's Talent is arriving late to things...it's so funny, but it works!). He's convinced he's a bad kid, but it gets harder for us to believe it as the story progresses, and even he seems to change his mind a little near the end.

Sanderson's strength, as in his other novels, is his plotting. He knows how to tell a story at a great pace, that moves forward and never lags. The author is also great with magic. He finds new ways to make magic just plain cool, like the Allomancers in The Final Empire (Mistborn, Book 1). In Alcatraz the protagonists have their Talents (his cousin's Talent is tripping), but they are also Occulators--that is, many of their powers come from the eye-glasses they wear! How cool is that?! Having worn glasses all throughout my childhood, the idea of them giving superpowers is cooler than cool.

Alcatraz would be great to read out loud to your kids (I'd say ages 9-12), and you won't be bored in the process!

I loved the movie "The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension" and know other people who loved it just as much as me. But I also know a number of people who just didn't get it. This book is that kind of tale. It has bits and pieces of everything: magic, foster parents, dinosaurs, librarians, author-asides, a very clever last page, maniacal characters, cliffhangers galore, and even more. Once I got into the 3rd chapter I was absorbed whole-heartedly into the rhythm of the storytelling, and raced through to the end. My 6th grade son and I have had some fascinating conversations about the book, and both enjoy talking about things my wife and younger son know nothing about.

Rutabaga!

One of the funnest books I have ever read. This is a very smart book, it is very well written, and had me laughing out loud several times (that is a rare occasion for me).

Not only is this book blatantly funny, but there are a lot of small jokes that are hidden amongst the lines that are a delight to find.

Very good read, well worth the price of a hardcover copy.

I really wanted to like this book. I liked the premise, and it sounded fun.

And I suppose that the plot, or the little there was of it, wasn't bad. It could even have been fun. It was certainly original enough (for the genre, where there is little that is truly original these days), and sometimes, just sometimes, the jokes were even funny. I actually liked that whole idea about glasses and Oculators, and as wildly unrealistic as the whole Evil Librarians Ruling The World thing was, I didn't mind; sometimes, a truly weird and unlikely idea is just what a story needs.

It's the writing that bothered me. That's the trouble with deciding to write a book in a style where the narrator adds constant, um, witty asides, addressing the reader, throwing in comments meant to be funny, or witty, or sarcastic, in about every second paragraph (or more): it can either be wildly amusing or intensely irritating, depending on the reader's personal taste.

In my case, it was the latter. Perhaps it's because I'm a cranky middle-aged woman with no sense of humour, and thus not the target group for this particular book (although I suspect that I'd have felt the same if I'd read it at age nine), or perhaps it's because it was just extremely annoying. I'm going with the latter.

That said, humour really is a matter of taste, and I can well believe the very things I didn't like could appeal enormously to someone else.

I write this under the pen name of book reviewer Alex C. Telander, so I can keep the librarians happy and unsuspecting. If you're reading this, then you must've heard about the supposed "fictional" book, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians. Good for you! You have taken the first step to learning the truth.

This book isn't really by Brandon Sanderson, it's a cover for the true story and biography of Alcatraz Smedry. In this first book in the series you'll learn about Alcatraz and why he's always breaking everything he touches. It's because that's his special power. In fact he thought he was an orphan - yeah, like Harry Potter - only turns out he was just being protected. On his thirteenth birthday - after burning the kitchen down because he broke the stove - he gets a bag of sand as a gift from the parents he never knew he had, an inheritance, and it get stolen. His grandfather appears from nowhere and just rescues him in time - his special ability is that he arrives late for everything, really handy when you're being shot at.

Alcatraz soon finds out that the world isn't what he thinks it is, that there's other places he never knew existed, but it's all because of those evil librarians; they're behind everything. They've pulled the wool over our eyes for a long time, but if you're reading this, then maybe you'll read Alcatraz's story and find out what the truth is. The evil librarians control everything, but it's up to Alcatraz along with help from his family and an appointed bodyguard, a girl who's a knight of the Crystallia, to try and stop these librarians and get that important bag of sand back. Because the sand can be used to make lenses which have special powers, and this sand will make a lens that can read any language, even the ancient language which nobody knows how to read.

So now you've read this fake book review about a fictional book called Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians by Brandon Sanderson, go out and get the book at any bookstore - avoid the library, `cos that's where the evil librarians are - and find out what the real world is like. Think The Matrix, only better!

If you liked this review and are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Originally written on July 18th 2009 ©Alex C. Telander.

For an interviews with Brandon Sanderson, go to[...]

The book is clever. I mean, really clever. The tone is Lemony Snickett crossed with Buckaroo Banzai. There were times when I laughed out loud and forced my husband to listen to an excerpt - specifically the veiled allusion in the last chapter, and also the authorial aside about books that you "should" read where boys have dogs that die. I'd recommend this book to people of all ages! I've already lent it to my nephew.

Of course, would I really expect anything else from Brandon Sanderson? He continually amazes me as an author, and I'd rank him as in my top three favorite writers of all times.

I'm looking forward to the release of the others in the series!

This book was so fun to read. There is so much humor, and Brandon really has a way of bringing out these quirky, off the wall jokes that just make you laugh (I love somewhat random humor, rutabaga, and so it made me enjoy this book even more). I love the Author's Foreword that talks about how this book really wasn't written by Brandon Sanderson, but rather by Alcatraz Smedry, but his "Hushlander" editor required him to have a pseudonym. I love all the "talents" the family members have, which seem not so much like talents at all, and how Brandon cleverly turned them into amazing abilities.

Also, I love how Alcatraz, writing this years after the events, keeps trying to convince you that he's a bad person and not a hero, as everyone thinks. (Not that anyone is convinced of this.) This does feel overdone at times, but it's the only real flaw I saw in this book.

Overall it's just a really fun book and I look forward to the whole series.

I don't get it, why is everyone giving this book 4 or 5 stars???

The beginning of Alcatraz Versus The Evil Librarians was excellent. The author does a good job sucking you in. Interesting things happen. Alcatraz accidentally sets his foster parents kitchen on fire. He has a talent for breaking things. His foster parents decide they can't take it any longer and he must go. A mysterious package arrives. A man comes to kill Alcatraz. A crazy old man claiming to be Alcatraz's grandfather helps Alcatraz escape. Alcatraz learns of the existence of another world, the Freeworld, where some of the people have strange talents. His grandfather's talent is always arriving late. What good is that you ask? Well when someone shoots at his grandfather they miss, see the bullets arrive on time but the grandfather is late.

This is good. Clever. I could love it. But...

The story just drags along so slowly, and cleverness only gets you so far. The narrator, the boy Alcatraz, gets repetitive, and his rants about librarians and how he is "not really good" grows tiresome. It's almost as if the publisher told the author, "Your book is good but a little thin so just add some useless talking." And the author did. Also, outside of Alcatraz, the other characters aren't really well developed or that interesting.

I kept hanging in there waiting for the action to pick up -- but almost halfway through (as I try to restrain my growing impatience) my son, who is 10, turns to me and says, "did he just spend a whole chapter getting them down a hallway with nothing happening." And I say, "yes he did." We continued on to about page 200 (out of 300) and there finally was some action but we just didn't care enough about Alcatraz to continue so we gave up and will move onto something else (try Suzanne Collins, Eoin Colfer, Kenneth Opel, Rick Riordan, or Patterson's Maximum Ride Series).

A librarian friend of mine was actually the one to recommend this series to me, after telling her about my students pushing through all of the Alex Rider series and looking for something along the same lines. I finally picked it up and it was a lot more than I expected. Sam has the power to break things, which isn't something good and is the cause of him moving from one foster home to another. When an old man claiming to be his grandfather shows up and tells him that this is a skill that is great, he's right to be skeptical. Of course, there's also the fact that his grandfather believes there are evil Librarians ruling this world and that there is another world out there.

I really loved this book. It was funny, magical and full of adventure. And even though it shows librarians as evil.. well I have no qualms to saying librarians could one day rule the world. Definitely a great start to a new series that I think my students will love.