Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore by Robin
Sloan
Recession
has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a San Francisco Web-design drone -
and serendipity, coupled with sheer curiosity, has landed him a new job working
the night shift at Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. But after just a few days,
Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than the name
suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never
seem to actually buy anything, instead they simply borrow impossibly obscure
volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate,
long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a
front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he's embarked on a complex
analysis of the customers' behaviour and roped his friends into helping to
figure out just what's going on. But once they bring their findings to Mr.
Penumbra, it turns out the secrets extend far outside the walls of the
bookstore...
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour
Bookstore is Robin Sloan’s first full length book, having previously published
short works of fiction. The origins of this book also lie within a short story.
It started as a 6000 word e-book, and luckily Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore
grew into a full book. I wanted to read this book purely
because of the title. A 24-hour bookstore. Just the sound of that is pretty
awesome, and with the mentioning of strange things that are a foot in Mr.
Penumbra’s store got my curiosity really piqued.
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore (I will
call it Mr. Penumbra’s from now on) starts of with a scene that is quite
catchy. In a few sentences you are readily introduced to the main protagonist
Clay Jannon, sorting through books. And at the end of that paragraph Robin
Sloan introduces just this very neat sentence “But let me back up”. Now I have
come across that a few times and for me this just works up wonders, producing a
direct feed into my curiosity, getting me eager to find out how Clay winded up
in there in the first place. And this is more or less the introduction and how
the first part of the book begins. In the earlier chapters you really get
acquainted with the main protagonist Clay who prior to his current job, working
for Mr. Penumbra, wasn’t doing that much with his life, having lost his other job he was jobhunting. Currently living in San
Francisco (this is also where most of the story takes place), Clay comes across
an ad for a wanted help in a bookstore, and after a “interesting” conversation
with Mr. Penumbra, Clay get the job as a night clerk. And he might have assumed this to be a boring job... he is in for something else!
What for me gave a pretty interesting
start to the book was that the events early on in the story all seem to be more
or less stuff that you encounter in the every day world, well mostly… And with
Clay’s character, having finally gotten a new job that he plans to keep,
putting a lot of effort in doing the best he can, running publicity for Mr.
Penumbra’s store with his own budget. All things that you really aspire in a
person. However, Clay has to keep to a few rules regarding working in the
bookstore, taking notes of the events and customers that appear in the story in
a notebook. What did they wear,down to the brand, were there
any other habits the persons were showing? All down to the details, this starts
to give rise to a few questions for Clay himself and he goes exploring...
This exploring of Clay puts Mr.
Penumbra’s in quite a rollercoaster ride to the finish. As the store is only a
front for something else, something much bigger, and well yes I’m just going to say it
since it will make you want to get your hands on this book, a secret
organization! Bam! Yes! A book about a bookstore with a conspiring secret
organization. If this doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will. I wasn’t expecting this to happen at all. As you got deeper
into the story and read about certain eccentric customers appearing in the
store ordering books that aren’t familiar to Clay and some don’t even hold and
ISBN I knew there had to be more but this was a unexpected. But this twist made
it that more interesting for me. As it not only transformed the storyline
itself it also allowed Clay to come into his part as a character and also tell
an hidden message by Robin Sloan himself.
Not all of the scenes of the book takes
place in the bookstore, Clay visits several other locations and along the way he
hooks up with several friends and makes new ones. Neel, a millionaire friend of
Clay from his geeky time, readily helps Clay and is part drawn to the lure of
all the books and an even bigger thing. Google. This is where the new made friend,
Kat of Clay comes in. Kat helps Clay to get to the bottom of an important code.
It was actually quite fun to read about how Google was shown in this book with
all the high-tech stuff, endless possibilities, great lunches in the afternoon.
Must be a cool place to work! By going at it like a group it really gave a bit
of a epic questing sense to the story, even though it takes places in this day
and age. A bit National Treasuresque. But there are still things that Google
can’t crack, luckily!
The whole secret organization part was a
cool feature in the book, especially that they were busy for so long already and
hadn’t gotten to a specific part yet, which Clay cracked using a computer in
about a few minutes. And especially as you see how this technology rubs off on Mr
Penumbra the bookstore holder. The ending of the book is really something and I
am for one quite pleased with it, it gives, a bit, of a guided ending. In the
last pages there is a nice summation and revelation of the secret organization and
the epilogue of the book shows how the friends get on with their lives. All in
all a very satisfying book!
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore is a
true pleasure to read. Having focused recently only on Science Fiction and
Fantasy reading a book like this really resets everything. Sometimes steering
out of what you normally read can really pay off. I found a lot of pleasure and
happy moments in Mr. Penumbra’s. There are a lot of up’s and downs for Clay. The
short romance between Clay and Kat, how they text and act is, I think, typical
for the earlier starts of a relation was nice to read about as it showed that
it wasn’t all on to race to decipher the books. Mr Penumbra’s 24-hour Bookstore
is a cool concept turned into a terrific story.