ALCATRAZ VERSUS THE SCRIVENER’S BONES

Searching for his grandfather, Oculator Alcatraz Smedry follows him to Egypt and into the Library of Alexandria. There he battles soul-stealing Curators and a librarian of the Scrivener’s Bones, part man, part machine and a user of Dark Oculary. In this second of a series presented as a memoir, Alcatraz experiments with leadership and learns a little more about his own Breaker Talent, including the possibility that it may be dangerous. One of the good guys, perhaps, in a world controlled by Evil Librarians, Alcatraz is also smirkily self-conscious, an annoying narrator who interrupts himself with irrelevancies, apologies and instructions to the reader. They should have started with the first volume, he warns, and, in fact, those who didn’t may find the setting confusing and the cast hard to keep straight. The animation-style action seems more appropriate to a big screen than a reader’s imagination, and veers from implausible to impossible and random. Trying too hard to be strange, the effect is not fun but forced. (Fantasy. 10-14)