We listened to Brandon Sanderson’s Alcatraz books on the way to and from Pennsylvania. The narrator sounds a lot like Brandon Sanderson himself on the Writing Excuses podcast – good punctuation? We did skip the second book so K would have something to look forward to as a big girl (?) Dan’s not fond of ghost motifs, even though K is always trying to prove how she can keep up with her brothers in blood-thirsty-ness, or bloodless-thirsty-ness in this case.
We enjoyed the humor of the Alcatraz Books: so be warned. The books are sort of spoof-y, sort of not, like the Princess Bride. Yes, it goofs on the genre (even on Sanderson’s other books) but not so that you don’t care what happens to the characters, or get annoyed with them, or cringe in memory of what it was like to be friends with someone you had a crush on at age 13 or 14. I’m looking forward to the 5th book finally coming out – but with this unreliable narrator, who knows what perils (and Guest family sorts of groaner jokes) will be published soon? (Pause for anticipatory shiver) I’m looking forward to it way more than filling out the FAFSA, figuring out how to hold a homeschool graduation picnic, starting to organize the testing co-op and finishing getting a molar extracted. Yeah, yeah, I know, first world problems – I still like anticipating new books better.
