Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Book Store
By Robin Sloan
Admit it. You would love to stumble into some secret society or adventure steeped in a rich history that goes all the way back to the roots of your favorite obsession. Every adult living in the dot com era can simultaneously appreciate and take for granted the power of the internet, getting the answer to a question in seconds that used to take hours or even weeks to track down. The moving and spawning beast that fills our days with absolutely everything under the sun (and beyond) makes it difficult for us to wrap our heads around unsolved mysteries.
Clay Jannon is a former web designer looking for work. He does something so unheard of it take the reader back to a simpler time of sock hops and malt shops… he walks around San Francisco looking for a “Help Wanted” sign. What he finds is Mr Penumbra’s 24 Hour Book Store. Mr Penumbra hires Clay to work the 10pm to 6am shift, where his quiet position consists of selling a book or two, but more importantly documenting the quirky members of what Clay can only assume is a secret society and fetching them books from a neck-ache inducing sky high unit of mysterious shelves. He does this by becoming something of an acrobat with the ladders. And he’s forbidden to open any of these books from the “way back list”. Obviously Mr Penumbra's is a front, Clay spends most of his days using the store next door's internet connection to improve upon the store's lackluster sales, until he stumbles on something much deeper.
Equal parts mystery and adventure, Clay’s fall into the rabbit hole made me laugh more than a few times. His nerd turned internet millionaire best friend Neel (still a nerd at heart) aides Clay in his quest, so does his artist roommate Mat and his love interest, Kat. A heroine in her own right, Kat has the smarts and power of Google behind her, she brings the future crashing into Mr Penumbra’s secret organization.
In a world where people frequently question the staying power of books in print with new technologies rising up each day, Robin Sloan’s take on the magical interwoven into the fabric of modern society is fun and exhilarating. Its exciting to think that there are still hidden treasures in this world. You can see the streets of Paris without ever taking a plane trip nowadays (just visit Googlemaps and search the street view), and who’s to say that in and of itself isn’t magical?
While I am disappointed to report there are not hundreds of quality novels written by Sloan waiting for you to unlock their treasures sitting on the nearest book store shelf, I can report that the author’s website is every bit as intriguing as the initial puzzle of Mr Penumbra. Search for it your self using the magical powers of internet search engines and see what I’m talking about.
...Also, there’s a surprise. Somewhere. I won’t spoil it for you. But it made me smile like the Cheshire cat. That’s all I’ll say about it.
