History Literature / AlcatrazSeries

* GuysSmashGirlsShoot: Averted with Alcatraz and Bastille. Bastille tends to smash things apart with her huge Crystin sword, while Alcatraz, being infinitely more squishy than a super-powered teenage girl, prefers to hang back as the strategist or adopt more cunning solutions to his problems.

* DownerEnding: The fifth book ends with [[spoiler:Biblioden completing a ritual by killing Alcatraz's father (offered up by Alcatraz himself due to cowardice), Grandpa Smedry dead, the massive assault on the Hushlands covered up, and Biblioden's plans continuing without a hitch]]. Alcatraz is insensate by the end of it, and absolutely refuses to write any more. [[spoiler:On a brighter note, the very end of the book is a letter from Bastille, saying that Grandpa Smedry managed to survive by reclaiming his Talent at the last second to arrive late to the bullet (though it will kill him sooner rather than later), and that she'll be writing the last book in the series. And she signs it "Bastille Smedry."]]

* GameChanger: Atticus's findings in the fourth book, leading him to believe he can [[spoiler:give everyone a Smedry talent]] leads to [[spoiler:Alcatraz teaming up with his evil librarian mother to stop his father from bringing about the end of the world.]]

* BunnyEaredLawyer: Just about every Smedry. They're smart and mostly academics, but they're... well, Smedrys.

* CerberusRetcon: The book's tendencies to go on long rambles before returning to the plot takes a dark atmosphere when Alcatraz himself admits that he's making the books longer to avoid getting to the AwfulTruth.

* CulturalPosturing: Free Kingdomers are ''convinced'' that every piece of technology they use is superior to the Hushlands equivalent. This extends to considering stairs more advanced than elevators ([[InsaneTrollLogic people can go up and down a flight of stairs at the same time, while an elevator can only go in one direction!]]). Sometimes justified by the fact that Free Kingdoms technology tend to be more advanced than it seems - e.g., torches that never burn out and that spread heat if and only if you want them to ''are'' arguably better than electric lights. Sometimes semi-justified by Free Kingdomers not actually knowing that much about the Hushlands and assuming that their technology haven't advanced since the middle ages - e.g., they think swords are superior to guns because to them a "gun" is something like a flintlock pistol and a "sword" is a silimatic AbsurdlySharpBlade. A lot of the time, though, it's simply that Free Kingdomers absolutely refuse to believe that Librarian slave-states could ''ever'' do anything as well as them.

* DepartmentOfChildDisservices: Alcatraz's child services worker was always telling him how useless he was. [[spoiler: Turns out she was his mother. And she's the nicer of his parents]].

** Ms. Fletcher/[[spoiler: Shasta Smedry]] sees herself as the OnlySaneWoman trying to maintain the peace between two warring factions she sees, [[GoldenMeanFallacy against all evidence,]] as [[NotSoDifferent equally good or bad]].
** [[spoiler: Attica Smedry]] wants to unleash forces that could cause TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt, because he thinks that that will [[WellIntentionedExtremist break the Librarians' control]] and [[GlorySeeker make everyone adore him as the hero who saved the Free Kingdoms.]]
** Biblioden wants a WorldOfSilence where nothing strange or irregular is allowed to exist. He is clearly shown to be the worst of the three - while Alkatraz grudgingly admits that the first two [[AntiVillain means well in their own way and have some degree of human feelings,]] the sight of Biblioden's soul ''horrifies'' him. [[spoiler: Biblioden is also the one who stands victorious at the end of the book, having killed Attica and stolen his research for his own ends.]]

* ForegoneConclusion: Will Alcatraz Smedry be sacrificed by Evil Librarians? Will he be killed by a Dark Oculator? Will he die when he breaks his own flying dragon ship? Will he be killed in the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them? Of course not, because he's still alive to tell the story. The suspense comes from finding out how he overcomes obstacles and whether or not anyone else dies. [[spoiler: [[BlatantLies Of course, Bastille totally dies at the end of book 2.]]]]

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: Kaz uses "Rocky Mountain oysters" as an expletive. While this doesn't seem to go with his use of nuts as curses throughout the rest of the book, some people may know that Rocky Mountain oysters refer to an [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_oysters entirely different type of nut]]. Also, in the fifth book the chapters were "allowed to name themselves," all except chapter four. Alcatraz claims he had to put his foot down an veto the extra "O" in the middle of its chosen name. The chapter title? Bob.

* HiddenAgendaVillain: Not even the other Librarians seem sure what Ms. Fletcher is up to, but Alcatraz assumes it's nothing good. [[spoiler: Finding out she's his mother, Shasta Smedry, just makes her mysterious motives ''harder'' to deal with.]]

* LivingBattery: [[spoiler: All of the Smedry's. At the time of the Incarna, the first Smedry was given an unknown power in order to power occulator glass. However, it proved to be too much and caused the destruction of their civilization. The Smedry Talents are a way of siphoning off that energy.]]

* LukeIAmYourFather: [[spoiler: Alcatraz's emotionally abusive case-worker turns out to be an Evil Librarian cultist. Then it turns out that she's his mother.]]

* MyLittlePanzer: Teddy bears that [[spoiler: double as hand grenades.]]

* OrderVersusChaos: The overall nature of the conflict between the Hushlands, where the Librarians control everything and everyone supposedly for their own good, and the quirky, colourful Free Kingdoms and the eccentric, heroic Smedry family in particular. The latter are pretty clearly the good guys, but the picture is made somewhat more complicated by the addition of sympathetic Librarian dissenters (showing that a little order can be good) and at least one Free Kingdomer, [[spoiler: Attica Smedry]], whose recklessness and [[GlorySeeker yearning for personal heroism]] makes him a villain (showing that too much chaos can be bad).

* ParentalAbandonment: Alcatraz grew up thinking he was an orphan, only to eventually find out that [[spoiler: both his parents are WellIntentionedExtremist types: one of them fighting for the Librarians, and the other one pursuing a plan that might inadvertently destroy the world. Also, neither have much in the way of parental skills.]]

* ShipTease: [[spoiler: There's a note at the very end of ''Alcatraz Vs The Dark Talent'', signed "Bastille Smedry"]].

** "I hadn't forgotten how [[spoiler: my mother]]'d given Himalaya up to be executed, nor how she'd sold me [[spoiler: her own son]] to Blackburn, the one-eyed Oculator. [[Literature/TheWheelOfTime Or how she killed Asmodean"]].

* SpoiledByTheFormat: A kind of meta example [[spoiler: Though ''Alcatraz Vs The Dark Talent'' appears to end with TheBadGuyWins, we the readers know that that's not the end of the story, because Alcatraz has to survive to write the books. And sure enough, there's a postscript from Bastille confirming that the story's not over]].
* StealthPun: In the fifth book, Alkatraz meets a dinosaur whose species he can't quite identify and who keeps helpfully explaining the meaning of difficult words to her friends. He asks in a footnote if the reader has figured out what sort of dinosaur she is yet. She's presumably a [[spoiler: thesaurus.]]

* TheNudifier: Stuff-eater teddy bear grenades are weapons being used against the Librarians. Guess who gets hit with it? [[spoiler: Alcatraz.]]

* TranslatorMicrobes: [[spoiler: The Translator's Lens allows the user to translate any written or spoken language - even the Forgotten Language.]]

* VillainHasAPoint: The librarians are ''usually'' wrong about the dangers of letting silimatic technology be commonly used. However, they are unfortunately right about how [[spoiler: giving everyone in the world Smedry talents, like Alcatraz's dad wants to do,]] would be the worst idea ever. Also, despite what the Free Kingdomers would tell you, there are advantages to organizing information.

** Also, after the dinosaurs ate themselves through the fiction M section to create a diversion, expect the almost stock anti-[[{{Twilight}} sparkle]] quip.

* KidHero: Alcatraz Smedry, though he constantly insists that he's not as heroic as people think.

* TheCavalry: In ''The Shattered Lense'', the city of Tuki Tuki just needs to hold out until Grandpa Smedry and 200 Crystins can arrive. But subverted: Alcatraz saves the day, rendering them moot.
* ChangelingFantasy: Pretty standard (though repeatedly lampshaded). Alcatraz is a poor orphan who is constantly thought to be worthless, only for it to turn out that he's from a family of practicaly artistocratic magic wielders.

* EvilerThanThou: In the fifth book, Alkatraz sees the souls of the series' three recurring villains, showing them to have very different motivations for their actions:

* TheNounWhoVerbed: Alcatraz shrewdly guesses that "She Who Cannot Be Named" must be so fearsome her name is taboo. Turns out people just can't pronounce it.

* SpeakOfTheDevil: Subverted with She Who Cannot Be Named. She isn't called that because [[TheScottishTrope it summons her or because her name has become a curse upon the world]], but because [[TheUnpronounceable few people can pronounce her real name]].

%%* NoodleIncident

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: An entire chapter is lost at one point, and the awesome events contained within are continually referred to. Of course, the entire thing is BlatantLies.

** Ms. Fletcher/[[spoiler: Shasta Smedry]] sees herself as the OnlySaneMan trying to maintain the peace between two warring factions she sees, [[GoldenMeanFallacy against all evidence,]] as [[NotSoDifferent equally good or bad]].

--->'''Alcatraz (narration)''' She stood up and tossed the book aside—a callous act for a Librarian. [[SelfDepreciation But then again it was merely a fantasy novel, so nothing that important.]]

On his thirteenth birthday, he receives a letter from his father, bequeathing him his inheritance: A bag of sand. The next day, Alcatraz's grandfather arrives (late, as usual) to take him on an adventure to recover the sands from his evil Librarian caseworker Ms. Fletcher.

-->--The first line of the first book

-->--The first line

You see, the world is much larger and stranger than we've been led to believe. One-quarter of the world is actually controlled by a cult of evil Librarians, who rewrite history in their conquered lands to remove things like strange powers, magical glass, and talking dinosaurs. Despite what they teach, most of the world is ''not'' ocean—those "empty spaces" on the map are actually the Free Kingdoms, which the Librarians keep hidden from the Hushlands. Australia is a recent Librarian acquisition, and Hawaii is an outlying island of the continent of Mokia, also recently conquered.

Alcatraz as a Smedry has a Talent—in his case, the Talent to break things. His grandfather is always late, his father could lose things, his uncle can lose ''himself'', his cousins can trip, or wake up really ugly, or speak nonsense. All these are important and powerful Talents that they use to fight the Librarians and preserve the freedom of the world.

->''"So there I was..."''

* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: An entire chapter is lost at one point, and the awesome events contained within are continually referred to. Off course, the entire thing is BlatantLies.

** Averted ''hard'' in book five, where [[spoiler:Grandpa Smedry is shot in the face.]] On hindsight, it makes a lot of sense, since [[spoiler:the Smedry Talents are broken in that book]], but the series spends so much time playing this trope straight that when RealityEnsues it's completely unexpected.