Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore–Robin Sloan

I’m not sure what to say about this book. I’ve been reading it over the span of a few weeks, so eventually I was just kind of bored with reading the same book for that long. It’s no Game of Thrones where so much is happening that it’s like reading 12 books in one and I could easily just keep going with it. Although I stopped reading Clash of Kings just so I could take a breather from everything. A girl can only take so much murder, mayhem, and well, incest.

This book is about a bookstore where weird things are happening, the clerk, Clay, has been sitting alone on the night shift of a store with practically no paying customers but with only a small group of people that use it as a library. They pop in and out at random times and are all quite odd. He has to mark down their appearances and which books they take and the overall atmosphere of the store when they are in there.

He has to solve the mystery of this store and what all the patrons are doing. He has to use the power of books, his brain, and new technology.

Sounds very interesting right?

It could’ve just been that I wasn’t in the mood to read it anymore, or that I did find some of it slightly juvenile. (Ie. That the code was in a series of books he read as a 6^th grader.) Or maybe that I just didn’t really identify with Clay Jannon very much because he seemed to be under the impression that because your friend becomes a millionaire that you are entitled to their money because you have been their friend since you were kids. Or that the when they broke the code it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. It was a lovely sentiment, but nonetheless I felt a bit like Kat where I felt a little let down.

Read it in one sitting, it’s a good book, but I doubt I’d read it again.