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Mr Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore
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Author Blurb
Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his job as a web-designer and into a job working the night shift at Mr Penumbra's 24-hour bookstore. It is a curious shop with curious customers who wander in only to borrow obscure, encoded volumes, all according to some arrangement with the mysterious Mr Penumbra. Intrigued and a little bored, Clay runs a computer analysis of the customers' behavior - and discovers that the dusty books and their dusty readers hold the key to a secret society that stretches right back to when bookmaking began ...
Confusing, geeky (slightly) and algorithm heavy are just some of the ways I would describe the first few chapters of 'Mr Penumbra's 24 hour bookstore'. However, just as it did for the naive new store clerk, Clay, the mysterious world of Mr Penumbra's will soon captivate you. For Clay, reading the last in the Dragon Song chronicles was the last time that he felt, even slightly, interested in something - neither reading, his ill-fated job as a bagel website designer, or women sparked his interest as that book had - and he seemed to have resigned himself to the fact that that was the last adrenaline pumping, interest spiking thing that he was ever going to encounter. Equally, he never believed that he would become the night clerk of a strange, topsy-turvy, seemingly forgotten, independent bookstore run by the equally eccentric Mr Penumbra.
Running parallel to Clay's own life the book takes a while to become truly fulfilling, and introduces you instead to the depressingly familiar world of a recession hit society, mundane activities driven only by the need to survive and the dim hope that things may get better. However, it is during the completion of one of the most depressing and mundane of tasks - attempting to find a job - that we see Clay's head lift, a tentative spark returning to his eyes as he stumbles across a job vacancy sign for a night clerk at a bookstore that he never really noticed before. He steps inside and with that we are as hooked and devoted as he will become.
For what follows is an exploration of the minds of those who hold books in highest regard, those who you imagine to lovingly touch the spines and hear the whispering of stories waiting to be read, told or revisited. As clay is drawn ever deeper in to the strange requests of his boss, the mysterious antics of the customers who only enter at night, know exactly what they wish to read next, and never pay a penny, and his infatuation with a pretty, smart, Googler named Kat, you realise that something deeper, more mysterious and possibly darker is happening here and that none of these are simple coincidences.
And so, as Clay assembles a team of himself, the quest leader, Kat the ally, and Neel, the billionaire friend, fellow Dragon Song fanatic and now patron, to find a mysteriously vanished Mr Penumbra you turn every page with a mixture of emotions. You wish the motley team the best, you want them to succeed, but equally, mirroring those of the elderly eccentric customers, you want to be the first to solve the ultimate mystery.
What ensues is a wonderfully clever mixture of the newest technology, the oldest tomes, the most eccentric, yet level headed characters, the desire to 'win', the sense of comradeship and ultimately the most wonderful sense of achievement when it all becomes clear.
Rating: 3/5
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