The primary concern from this book comes from attempts at humor that go too far. Examples:
“If he starts to sing I may strangle myself” and “of course if you do that I’ll probably have to hunt you down and kill you or dress you in a tunic… I’m still not sure which is worse”. When discussing ‘humility’ he comments that “I sincerely hope you never have to feel this emotion. Like asparagus and fish, it’s not really as good for you as everyone says it is”. Refers to things that are meaningful, important, thoughtful as “you know, boring”. When providing a list of ‘cherished things’ the narrator includes “the bullet that killed your arch nemesis”. A lady is described as business-like, curt and more than a little condescending to which we are told are all good reasons why she wasn’t married. After describing someone different the narrator says, “besides, you’ve seen the type of people who walk around downtown, haven’t you?”
There are also immoral comments or actions that are attributed to even the ‘good’ characters. The narrator calls themselves not a good person (a few times), a selfish contemptible fool and a coward. A fire breaks out and Alcatraz doesn’t handle it as an emergency (meant to create a funny scene for the reader). The comment is made that, “This was an absolute lie, but would you have answered any different?” Continuing a statement we listed above he says, “selfishness, arrogance, callousness got me much further than humility ever did. Did I mention I wasn’t a very good person?” Alcatraz gives his foster family “reasonable lies''.
In addition to these concerns around humor, there are a few comments that are dark or violent in nature, even though the mood of the book attempts to lighten it considerably. To help understand what we mean by this we will offer an example. Early in the book the main character finds themselves “tied to an altar made of outdated encyclopedias, about to get sacrificed to the dark powers by a cult of evil librarians”. Bad guy tells Alcatraz that he is worthless, fatherless, a parasite on the system. A description of someone crying out in so much pain they’d have killed themselves to stop it. After being captured he said the evil librarians are “about to split me open and spill my blood into the void to complete some dark ritual”.
As mentioned above, the evil librarians are referred to as a “cult”. There are a few other random things mentioned: romance novels, Rambo, devilishly handsome, tortured, “tethered to the spirit of my dead ancestors” “gym class for the murderously insane”, “this is suicide”, “staying up until unholy hours of the night” are used. The terms moron, fat, loon, lunatic, maniac, idiot appear as well.