Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

About the Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians series

On his thirteenth birthday, Alcatraz Smedry is mailed a bag of sand by the father he's never met -- and promptly discovers it's the only thing standing between him and a home invasion by Evil Librarians. It turns out the world's librarians secretly run a global conspiracy to suppress magic and keep humanity ignorant, and Alcatraz's own bizarre "Smedry Talent" (a supernatural gift for breaking things at exactly the wrong moment) makes him exactly the weapon the resistance needs.

Brandon Sanderson wrote this middle-grade series as a deliberate change of pace from his doorstop adult epics: fast, silly, aggressively self-aware, with a narrator who interrupts his own story constantly to argue with the reader, mock fantasy-novel conventions, and admit when he's stalling. Beneath the gags sits real Sanderson craftsmanship -- an inventive magic system built on absurd "Talents" (being late, tripping, getting lost), and a plot that rewards attention even while it's making fun of itself.

Five numbered books follow Alcatraz's escalating war against the Evil Librarians; a sixth volume shifts the narration to his fierce, sword-wielding bodyguard Bastille to close out the series from a new angle.

How to read this series

Read the five numbered novels in publication order -- Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians, Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones, Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia, Alcatraz Versus the Shattered Lens, The Dark Talent -- then finish with Bastille vs. the Evil Librarians, which retells and continues the story's endgame from Bastille's point of view rather than Alcatraz's.

The unreliable, fourth-wall-breaking narration is part of the fun from book one, so there's no benefit to skipping around. No outside reading is required; this series is entirely separate from Sanderson's Cosmere fantasy universe.