Like give a positive review of this book. By the fourth book, you should really know how you feel about the characters, and be invested in the plot; I don’t, and I’m not. Alcatraz just gets smarmier and more annoying each page, and the rest of the characters seem like they’re just walking through their parts, reading off lines to move the plot along. Not that most of them really come off as fully fleshed out characters anymore; they’re mostly named clothes hangers to hang lines and barely-there motivations on. And not that this book had much of a plot to begin with; it just gave off “this book is filler events so as to set the scene for the big moment in the next book” vibes. Like the first episode in a two-parter, or Half-Blood Prince was for Harry Potter.
The entire plot can be summed up as: Alcatraz and his gang of family, friends, and potential love interest run through 3 buildings, 2 fields, 1 village, and a zoo to try and stop evil people from evil-ing. He finds out things aren’t what he thought they were in the first 3 books (if he thought at all), and the good guys win, kind of. And that kind of pushes the plot for the next book.
To be honest, I’m trying to even muster up enthusiasm to give a review. The chapter numbering is getting old, and the jokes are getting more meta and immature. And even with Sanderson still mentioning Terry Pratchett (which automatically give a book a tick up in my opinion), and occasionally still writing like he believes children are not blithering morons, it’s still getting painful to read them. I am starting to feel like I am reading this series solely because I bought all six books in one shot, and they’re short enough that it’s not too much of an effort to just get through them.