"The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon away from
life as a San Francisco web-design drone and into the aisles of Mr. Penumbra's
24-Hour Bookstore, but after a few days on the job, Clay discovers that the store
is more curious than either its name or its gnomic owner might suggest. The
customers are few, and they never seem to buy anything; instead, they
"check out" large, obscure volumes from strange corners of the store.
Suspicious, Clay engineers an analysis of the clientele's behavior, seeking
help from his variously talented friends, but when they bring their findings to
Mr. Penumbra, they discover the bookstore's secrets extend far beyond its
walls."
Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is one of
those high concepts narrative ideas that is currently popular in all forms of
media. It has a mystery at its core and a sense of adventures hinted in the
umbra, the dark central part of the stores bookshelves. But you also can’t
escape the feeling that we’ve seen this all before. I mean take all the 80’s
references and sci-fi trapping of Ready Player One out and you’ll find Mr.
Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. So yeah, it is not very original concept
and the whole secret society -the mystery and the intrigue they generate- has
been done countless times before and have been generally executed better.
Still, the book has a likable main character and it is a
swift, easy read (it’s not as dense with nostalgia as Ready Player One). There
is some quick-witted humor and enough of the “mystery” to keep me reading
–though I knew I was going to be a bit disappointed with the ending. Again,
sometimes the danger of these high concept ideas is that while they come at you
fast, unloading one mystery after another, when it comes to wrapping them up,
the plot sort of just fizzles out. And while I got the coda of the book, and
the idea that both physical books and e-books can live together in harmony,
Sloan’s endless name dropping of Google and Amazon’s Kindle became tedious.
They essentially became supporting characters in the story, and that sort of
blatant advertising became tedious.
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