Our author, describing his younger adventures, is always at pains to tell us he did things for the wrong reason – such as letting the kitchen burn in the first place. Against all his own instincts, our anti-hero goes with the latter man, finding his destiny in freeing the western world from the evil Librarians, and telling us about it later as an adult in a most sardonic fashion.Īnd the word anti-hero is key here. What's more the guy says Al's abilities in breaking things are a Talent with a capital T, and the sands – that were stolen overnight – are a great threat to the world in the hands of Librarians (with a capital L). Expecting to just be farmed out to more foster parents, instead he is the subject of a battle between an armed man and a strange old fellow claiming to be Alcatraz's grandfather. The celebration of Alcatraz's thirteenth birthday is quite a muted one – he gets a thirteen-year old parcel of sand in the post, claimed to be his inheritance from his birth parents, and he burns down the kitchen in his foster home – the latest in a long line of disasters that have followed him in his short accident-prone life. Summary: While it has its own in-built criticism this fantasy is just too schizophrenic for its, or anyone's, own good.
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