Wrapped in a glow in the dark cover and tackled in less than
300 pages, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
offers a modern, code driven mystery. Robin Sloan’s text flows, and while first
person narratives often take on the search for self, Clay Jannon instead seeks
the key to life through an ancient society hidden within Mr. Penumbra’s
bookstore, a store with hauntingly high ceilings and strange members that never
pay a dime for the books they seek. It is here that Sloan blends the past with
the present, meshing a supposedly dying medium in books with a tech driven
society. Author Robin Sloan spins a web of mystery, answers the questions, and
asks some more as the pages and ideas cascade by.
As the mystery unravels, and Jannon is driven further into
the maze of a secret society and protecting a boss he has come to revere and
love, we find the power of the internet being tossed into plain view. Whether
through crowd sourcing a puzzle or dropping a complicated task into the Google’s
master server for three seconds (and partially disabling the internet for that
length of time), Jannon proves resourceful. He embodies the do it yourself
movement sprawled across the internet landscape, creating an intricate book scanner
from cardboard, and transverses the New York City street view of Google maps
with the help of thousands of bored internet users. A failed techie himself,
Jannon’s quest turns a secret society on its heels while allowing for a gradual
character change and eventual assimilation into society with the typical cries
of displeasure one finds.
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