I am in love with this witty, wonderfully wacky series. Of course, any series where the librarians are the villains bent on dominating the world works for me. Still, Sanderson cracks me up with his sneaky asides, his insistence that his hero is really a coward, and his irreverent pokes at librarians. In this, the second book of the series, our hero goes to the famed library at Alexandria to find his missing father and grandfather. Unfortunately, the library is guarded by soulless spirits who continually tempt you to ask for a book, any book. The problem is, once you touch a book or take it from the shelves, your soul is theirs, and you become one of them. Makes it very hard to do any research! To add to the intrigue, Alcatraz and his friends are being hunted by a half-man, half-machine monster --a.k.a. Scrivener's Bone -- that is relentlessly determined to destroy them. How he defeats the Bone and saves his father's soul is a fast-paced, highly entertaining read.
