{"id":30402,"date":"2018-06-07T01:26:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T06:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/?p=30402"},"modified":"2018-10-23T19:39:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-24T00:39:34","slug":"billiams-book-blog-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somewhatnerdy.com\/home\/billiams-book-blog-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Alcatraz VS The Evil Librarians: Billiam’s Book Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

For years Brandon Sanderson has been one of my favorite authors. I was introduced to him though a friend who was a fan of the <\/span>Mistborn<\/span><\/i> series. He turned me onto it and the rest is history. That was my first jaunt into the wider world of fantasy books. Until then my world was made up of Terry Brooks, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Pierce Anthony. With the introduction of Sanderson, I had my eyes open to a bigger world of books.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few years ago I was fortunate enough to meet him and get some of my books signed. It was there that he made a joke about another series he wrote that I knew nothing about. It was called Alcatraz VS The Evil Librarians and it was a series of kids books.<\/span><\/p>\n

The thing about kids books is that they never cross my mind. I normally just look at what new adult level books are out there, sometimes young adult, but wondering what children\u2019s books an author has written was foreign to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

That being said, the fact that one of my favorite authors wrote a kids book got me interested. Interested enough to read it. So here\u2019s my review.<\/span><\/p>\n

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If you\u2019re familiar with authors like Beverly Cleary or Roald Dahl, then you\u2019ll know what level of reading to expect from <\/span>Alcatraz Vs The Evil Librarians<\/span><\/i>. If you\u2019ve read the <\/span>Lemony Snicket<\/span><\/i> books by Dale Handler then you\u2019ll be very familiar. But just because it\u2019s a kids book doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t be enjoyable for anyone above the age of twelve.<\/span><\/p>\n

This book is about thirteen year old Alcatraz Smedry, a foster child who has a power, kind of. He can break anything. Things just break around him with no purposeful action on his part. On his birthday, he gets a bag of sand from his long lost parents but it\u2019s quickly stolen. After the theft, his grandfather appears out of nowhere and tells him that there\u2019s a war going on with a cult of evil librarians and the sand was a very powerful artifact that could turn the tide of the war. Can Alcatraz use his amazing destructive powers to help save the day? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest complaint that people had about the book is that they felt talked down to. \u00a0So I went into it hyper aware of the storytelling. I did notice what people were talking about, what those naysayers picked up on, but I\u2019m here to tell you that that\u2019s just the way Alcatraz is. \u00a0This story is told in the first person and Alcatraz explains a lot, not because Sanderson assumes the readers are stupid, but because it\u2019s part of the narrative. Allow me to explain. Spoiler free, of course.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the book, there\u2019s another world right next to ours. Similar to <\/span>Harry Potter<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>Artemis Fowl<\/span><\/i>. A world where there\u2019s magical stuff going on and we don\u2019t notice any of it. Since this is written in the first person, Alcatraz has to pause to explain things to us, where normally we\u2019d get some paragraph of exposition. Alcatraz says things like \u201cIf you\u2019re a Hushlander, you probably don\u2019t know what a Oculator is.\u201d So, to some, it could seem like the reader is being talked down to. But in reality, that\u2019s not the case at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put all that aside and move on. Sanderson created a really colorful and interesting world and we just get a glimpse of it in <\/span>Alcatraz Vs. The Evil Librarians<\/span><\/i>. It\u2019s a short book which turns out to be a double-edged sword. It was a really quick read. It only took me a couple hours of distracted reading. But I wanted more. \u00a0It was still a complete story, just one sliver of the whole tale. The books that I mentioned before, <\/span>Harry Potter<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Artemis Fowl<\/span><\/i>, ones like that sit in the grey zone betweens a children\u2019s book and a young adult novel, they feel more like a full novel while <\/span>Alcatraz<\/span><\/i> feels like a glorified short story. That doesn\u2019t me I didn\u2019t like it. I liked it quite a bit, but using it for my Popsugar Reading Challenge felt like cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sanderson spun a world of enjoyable and relatable characters and put them into a conflict that\u2019s both intriguing and captivating. I\u2019ve mentioned other series a couple times in this review but it\u2019s really not fair to compare <\/span>Alcatraz<\/span><\/i> to those series as this book is truly it\u2019s own creature. The best I can come up with is if <\/span>Lemony Snicket<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Harry Potter<\/span><\/i> had a baby. That baby would be <\/span>Alcatraz.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This was a good book and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The first one really got me hooked and I look forward to picking up the other books in this series and quickly reading them all. After reading so many epics it was a very nice change to pick up a book that I could have finished in an hour of focused reading. <\/span><\/p>\n

I highly suggest this book to anyone who just wants a little fun and is able to just sit back and enjoy an easy to read book. <\/span><\/p>\n

Alcatraz Vs The Evil Librarians<\/i><\/b> gets an 8 out of 11<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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