Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan

I had heard so much about this book that when I saw it peeking out from the shelves of my local book shop I had to buy it. I sat on my bed turning it over in my hands and realised I had no real idea of what the book was actually about — other than a 24 hour store — but sometimes that is the best way, so I jumped right in. 

This book records the story of Clay Jannon, a 26 year old programmer/designer who has been hit by recession and is in need of a new job. He finds himself outside the slightly time warped Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore advertising for a new job and steps inside.

"I pushed through the bookstore's glass door. It made a bell tinkle brightly up above, and I stepped slowly through. I did not realise at the time what an important threshold I had just crossed."

I was pulled in from the start and enjoyed flicking through the early pages of this book. Much like Clay I was filled with curiosity as to what dwelled in the books back in the dark shelves which old members sought out night after night. The mystery surrounding old Mr Penumbra was infectious and the book had an eery feeling of magic running through it. (I was getting the idea that this could be a book store's version of Harry Potter - but on a much smaller scale.) The way in which Sloan describes his surroundings is incredibly vivid,  you almost begin to feel the atmosphere in the book climbing out into your bedroom and encompassing you in it; this is something that I cannot fault in the book.

"The shelves were packed close together, and it felt like I was standing at the border of a forest — not a friendly California forest, either, but an old Transylvanian forest, a forest full of wolves and witches and dagger-wielding bandits all waiting just beyond moonlight's reach. There were ladders that clung to the shelves and rolled side to side. Usually those seem charming, but here, stretching up into the gloom, they were ominous. They whispered of accidents in the dark."

Once I waded further into the book I found myself detaching from both the story and the characters. I felt there were no real explorations into the characters, no developments made. And rather than a 26 year old man, Clay and his friends seemed no older than 16 years old. The story runs away from the more mystical adventure that it began with and introduced the likes of Google as a character in itself.

The ending was quite an anti-climax as I really couldn't understand where the writer was going to go with it, it was set up for a fall as soon as it was something of a more modern entity. I found myself really fighting to get through the last two hundred pages which rarely happens to me. I wish I could have loved it like many others did, but it just wasn't the book for me!