I had been wanting to read Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians for a while, since I read a couple of reviews, including an Unshelved Book Club strip that finally pushed me to make the effort. Well, actually, it still took a week or two, largely because all I could remember was that the book had evil librarians, which wasn’t enough to browse for it in the library.
It’s a good book, and good fun, and if I was disappointed, it is probably because I’ve been reading too much jokey stuff lately. The book is very meta, with Brandon Sanderson (in his character as Alcatraz Smedley) drawing attention to his practice of ending chapters with cliffhangers, and in particular, constantly reminding us that the whole thing is a flashback from the first sentence of Chapter One: So, there I was, tied to an altar made from outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil Librarians. As he points out, while we all can figure out that he wasn’t sacrificed, he knows how and why, and he’s not telling us yet, not so much to provide narrative context but just because he likes keeping us in suspense. Writers are sadists, that way.
I will probably read the next book in the series, and, considering that what I didn’t quite like in this one was the frequency with which the jokes fell flat, maybe I should look into reading some of his not-meant-to-be-comic stuff. It’s always a good time to start a new epic fantasy series, right?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.