This helps when this is a sign of danger. Sing, Alcatraz's cousin's talent is the ability to trip and fall to the ground. In his own words "I've been arriving late to my own death for years now."
But his power also allows him to arrive late to other things, like bullets, which always miss him, and his blood can arrive late to wounds so that he doesn't bleed to death. As such, he is always running behind the clock. Grandpa Smedry, Alcatraz's grandfather, has the power to arrive late. In the course of the book, it is revealed that Alcatraz's biological family, the Smedrys, all are born with amazing talents that they use to combat the evil cult of librarians.Īlcatraz has the talent of breaking things. Fletcher, Alcatraz's case worker and Radrian Blackburn, a Dark Oculator. These freedom fighters include Alcatraz's grandfather, Leavenworth Smedry, usually just referred to as "Grandpa Smedry" Bastille, Grandpa's bodyguard and a Crystin Knight Sing Sing - Sing for short - Alcatraz's Polynesian cousin and Quentin, another cousin. The plot evolves around the title character and a small group of freedom fighters operating against the cult of evil librarians that secretly rule the world. After the old man finds Alcatraz's bag of sand missing, he and Alcatraz must go on a mission to recover it at all cost from the Evil Librarians, secret rulers of the world. The next day an old man arrives at the house and claims to be his grandfather, telling Alcatraz that he has a special, powerful talent, breaking things. Fletcher, Alcatraz's personal caseworker, arrives and scolds him for destroying his foster parents' kitchen. It is revealed that he has been in countless foster homes, always ending up with Alcatraz "destroying" things precious to the people taking care of him. The book starts with Alcatraz setting fire to his foster parents' kitchen. After receiving a bag of sand for his thirteenth birthday, he is involved in a very strange set of events. Highly recommended! I’ll be getting Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones pretty soon.Alcatraz Smedry, a young teen, is always breaking things. There’s a complex world conspiracy, dinosaurs, myths and misinformation and it all makes a weird kind of sense. The plot and characters are pretty ridiculously silly, but despite that and Alcatraz’s constant sarcasm, the story still has meaningful character development and a solid emotional core. I had a smirk on my face throughout the book. It’s certainly not what I was expecting, and it works wonderfully. He is fully aware of the fact that he’s a narrator (the book is a book that he writes in-world), and he takes pains to be as obnoxious of a one as possible, frequently taking the time to comment on the structure of the story and the narrative devices he’s using to hook you in. Such a crazy tale has to be true, so Alcatraz sets off on an adventure to infiltrate the local library and save the world!Īlcatraz is an extremely funny narrator – he’s sarcastic, meta and extremely genre savvy. And then an old man shows up claiming to be his grandfather, that Alcatraz’s continuous destruction of things is in fact a superpower, that the librarians of the world are in fact a cult that have been trying to take over the world for millenniums – and most importantly, that they really need to go rescue that bag of sand. But then he receives a mysterious bag of sand as a birthday present which he disregards but then gets promptly stolen. It’s his thirteenth birthday, and he’s pretty resigned to his fate.
Alcatraz Smedry has been bouncing from foster home to foster home throughout his life – sooner or later, everyone gets tired of his propensity to break everything he touches. I was really obsessed with young adult books in 2010 and early 2011, but have since cooled (the profusion of implausible dystopias featuring a teenage girl changing the face of society while having to choose between the smouldering forbidden bad boy and the sweet but mildly boring good boy – yeah, they’ve really turned me off.)Īnyway, I’m glad I got over it and bought a copy of Alcatraz versus the Evil Librarians, because it’s really amazing.
However, I’ve been reluctant to read the Alcatraz Smedry series since it’s middle grade, but I figured I would give it a try. If you’ve been reading the posts on this blog, you know that I’m a huge Brandon Sanderson fan, and I own pretty much all of his books.