Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians (Alcatraz, #1)

by Brandon Sanderson

Hushlanders, I’d like to take this opportunity to commend you for reading this book. I realize the difficulty you must have gone through to obtain it—after all, no Librarian is likely to recommend it, considering the secrets it exposes about their kind. Actually, my experience has been that people generally don’t recommend this kind of book at all. It is far too interesting. Perhaps you have had other kinds of books recommended to you. Perhaps, even, you have been given books by friends, parents, or teachers, then told that these books are the type you “have to read.” Those books are invariably described as “important”—which, in my experience, pretty much means that they’re boring. (Words like meaningful and thoughtful are other good clues.) If there is a boy in these kinds of books, he will not go on an adventure to fight against Librarians, paper monsters, and one-eyed Dark Oculators. In fact, the lad will not go on an adventure or fight against anything at all. Instead, his dog will die. Or, in some cases, his mother will die. If it’s a really meaningful book, both his dog and his mother will die. (Apparently, most writers have something against dogs and mothers.) Neither my mother nor my dog dies in this book. I’m rather tired of those types of stories. In my opinion, such fantastical, unrealistic books—books in which boys live on mountains, families work on farms, or anyone has anything to do with the Great Depression—have a tendency to rot the brain. To combat such s...

“Your Talent is still wild,” Grandpa Smedry said. “You haven’t practiced it enough. Being a Smedry isn’t only about having a Talent, it’s about finding out how to use that Talent. A clever person can make anything turn to his advantage, no matter how much a disadvantage it may seem at first.

The room was filled with dinosaurs. Real, live, moving dinosaurs. One of them waved at me. I paused for a moment. “Oh,” I finally said, “is that all? I was worried that I might find something strange in here.”

“Why, hello, good chap!” cried a small green pterodactyl. “You don’t look like a Librarian sort.” Talking rocks might have gotten a reaction out of me. A talking slice of cheese definitely would have. Talking dinosaurs … meh.

Some people assume that authors write books because we have vivid imaginations and want to share our vision. Other people assume that authors write because we are bursting with stories, and therefore must scribble those stories down in moments of creative propondidty. Both groups of people are completely wrong. Authors write books for one, and only one, reason: because we like to torture people.

Realizing my faults didn’t make my head bow but made me look up instead. Realizing how stupid I had been didn’t cause me grief but made me smile at my own foolishness. Losing my identity didn’t make me feel paranoid or worthless.

Three chapters, on the other hand, is a very long time. It is a longer time than I spent in my foster home. It is a longer time than I spent visiting the gas station. It’s even a longer time than I spent in childhood, which was covered in only about two sentences. Why so long in prison? At that moment, I was struggling with the same question. Few things are more maddening than forced inactivity, and I had been forced into inactivity for two entire chapters. True, I’d had some good, deep, personal revelations—however, the time for those had passed. I would almost rather have been tied to an altar and sacrificed, as opposed to being forced to sit around and wait while my grandfather was towed off to be tortured.

Grandpa Smedry and the others called my Talent a blessing. Yet I had trouble seeing that. Even during the infiltration, it seemed like the Talent had been only accidentally useful. Power was nothing without control.

Not only is it against a rashional purson’s nature to try and convince himself that he is more stoopid than he thinks he is, it is quite dificult to not think about anything when one has been told not to. Only the trooly most briliant of peeple can purrtend stoopidity so sucessfuly. Butt eet kan bee dun.

Secondly, you have the convenience of holding this story in e-book form. It is a complete narrative, which you can look through at your leisure. You can go back and reread sections (which, because of the marvelous writing the book contains, you have undoubtedly already done). You could even scan to the end and read the last page. Know that by doing so, however, you would violate every holy and honorable storytelling principle known to man, thereby throwing the universe into chaos and causing grief to untold millions. Your choice.

The third reason you think you are smarter than the characters is because you have me to explain things to you. Obviously, you don’t fully appreciate this advantage. Suffice it to say that without me, you would be far more confused about this story than you are. In fact, without me, you’d probably be very confused as you tried to read this book. After all, it would be filled with blank pages.

dashed back toward the torturing room. The guards still lay unconscious in the hallway where Bastille had left them. I checked the knothole—Blackburn was still there inside, and he had apparently decided to rough up Grandpa Smedry with slaps to the face. “I think I’ll go for a walk.…” Grandpa Smedry said cheerfully. “Wasing not of wasing is,” Quentin added.

You see, that last chapter ended with a terribly unfair hook. By now it is probably very late at night, and you have stayed up to read this book when you should have gone to sleep. If this is the case, then I commend you for falling into my trap. It is a writer’s greatest pleasure to hear that someone was kept up until the unholy hours of the morning reading one of his books. It goes back to authors being terrible people who delight in the suffering of others. Plus we get a kickback from the caffeine industry.

Perhaps you’ve owned something in your life to which you ascribed particular pleasure. A treasured toy, perhaps. Some photographs. The steel skull of your archnemesis.

Small children looked through picture books. Parents checked out the latest thrillers. The rebellious, trouble-making types looked through the fantasy section. A few unfortunate kids ended up with meaningful books about dysfunctional families.