Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore Book Review
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was written by Robin Sloan. Clay
Jannon, the main character and narrator, takes a job as a clerk for Mr.
Penumbra’s 24-Hour bookstore after walking around San Francisco and seeing that
Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore was in need of a clerk to man the store during
night hours. Clay basically goes into work every night and never really has
anybody come in. He starts to wonder what it really going on with the bookstore
when he sees that there isn’t a substantial way that the bookstore is actually
making money. There are also these people who come in and “borrow” books
without paying for them. The books that the people are borrowing turn out to be
heavily encoded and Clay is unable to make any sense as to what they say. It is
at this point in the story that Clay begins to question what the bookstore is
really covering up. Is it a cult? Or is it a place that is rampant with drugs? Clay
then becomes quite involved in a “secret” society that is running the
bookstore. A potential for immortality keeps coming up, could this actually
lead to something that Clay might need to know? This book is very interesting
and suspenseful and I would recommend it to everyone to read.
Setting was very interesting in this book and really helped to create some
suspense in the book with the very vivid descriptions of the setting at
different times in the novel. A part in the book where the use of setting
really helped to get an overall feel for what was going on, was with the
description of the Reading Room. Clay marvels at the Reading Room when he
descends into it, “...Wide steps curl down into the darkness. The ceiling is
crisscrossed with heavy wooden beams. ...The floor is bedrock ...smooth like
glass” (Sloan 143-44). This description of the Reading Room feels like the
reader is actually in the room while the story is taking place. The visual
quality that comes from this description is really quite impeccable. With the
description of the Reading Room being underground to with the floor made of
bedrock that seems just like glass, the reader can really feel that they are
actually in the Reading Room and experiencing it along with Clay. Setting adds
many visual qualities to the story that really tend to immerse the reader in Mr.
Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore setting especially in regard to places like
the Waybacklist and the Reading Room.
The characters were also very
important in the story with each character offering a variety of different
character viewpoints that really help to bring a lot of interesting viewpoints to [A1] the story and
make it more enjoyable to read. There are many different types of characters
from people that are really rich to people with art degrees all the way up to
people that are CEOs and PMs of companies. There is a lot of variety that is
attributed with these different characters. There are also characters that are
in The Dragon-Song Chronicles, that
have very similar viewpoints from the characters in the actual story as seen
through the shade,” ‘What do you seek in
this place?’ the shade asked plainly” (Sloan 263). The shade symbolizes Mr.
Penumbra in The Dragon-Song Chronicles.
The concept of characters with in the characters of the book is quite
interesting. The Dragon-Song Chronicles
represent characters that Moffat had originally interacted and came to really
enjoy and respect in real life. He wanted to make them immortal so he wrote
about them in the Chronicles and in a
sense as long as people are reading those books, the characters are immortal. The interconnectedness of the characters in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and in The Dragon-Song Chronicles really shows
the importance of characters and what they can do for a novel. The characters
in The Dragon-Song Chronicles were
able to actually help Clay solve the puzzle of The Unbroken Spin. If it wasn’t
for the characters presented in the Chronicles
Clay would probably not have been successful in solving the puzzle.
There are many underlying themes
that are present in the novel that make it interesting to read. There is the
theme of love that Clay and exhibit quite well throughout the novel. Even
though Clay and Kat’s relationship becomes rocky, the central theme of love is
still present. There is also suspense which is presented in the books of the
Waybacklist as well as the people of the Unbroken Spin that go and “borrow”
books like the bookstore is a public library. It isn’t until Mat visits the
bookstore that Clay finds out a little bit about the secrecy in the bookstore. This
all starts when Mat visits Clay at ends up taking a book off of the Waybacklist
and reading it, “…there aren’t words at all. The pages are just long runs of
letters” (Sloan 29). This incident opens the floodgates on Clay’s curiosity for
what is actually happening and makes him view the bookstore as well as Mr.
Penumbra in a new light. Without themes in the novel there wouldn’t be much
supporting the overall plot. Mr.
Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore does have a good plot, however; the plot
wouldn’t have been quite as lively or flowing if there were elements in the
novel, like setting that helped to “spice” up the novel. It also wouldn’t flow very smoothly. The
messages that are presented in the novel are pretty much all messages that
pertain to the novel and make sense for them to be there. There is one theme
that is presented in the novel that in my opinion really doesn’t belong. That
theme is technology. I understand that the novel takes place in a changing
world, but “new” technology is only really mentioned in the novel, like the new
e-readers that Mr. Penumbra has. The novel is about books and technology and
physical books really do not mesh well together. If Sloan and used the “new”
technology in a different way in the novel it would have flowed better and
gotten the message across. That is why technology is really the only theme in
the novel that I do not like and really doesn’t make sense to be in a novel
about books without having a better argument for it being there.
Overall, I really did enjoy Robin
Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.
There were a few parts in the book where I felt like they could have turned out
differently and would have had a better appeal to the reader such as the
ending. Besides that, I really did enjoy the book and would recommend it to
other people to read it. I feel, however; that there will be only a certain
type of reader that will enjoy the book as well as I did. People that enjoy
“traditional” novels would probably not enjoy this book as well as I did,
however; people that like to read books about a certain niche, such as books
and typography, will really enjoy this book. Besides that it was an excellent
read and I would really recommend it to everyone.
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