by Robin Sloan
I didn't quite know what to make of this. In a way, it was a shame that I read it right after The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, because I loved that book so much it was going be hard to beat. I loved the idea of the story of Mr Penumbra - a bookshop that is open all day and all night, but hardly has any customers. The few customers it has act rather strangely and keep quoting what sounds like a Latin phrase to Clay, the young lad whose job it is to man the bookstore through the night. Using the help of a few of his friends, he discovers that many of the non-mainstream books kept in the shop are written in code. Once this code is broken, the secret to eternal life is revealed. But Clay doesn't want to have to read through all the books to solve the puzzle. One of his friends works at Google and she uses her technological wizardry to solve it the modern way. I think this is where the story lost me slightly. I wanted an oldy-worldy magical story of secrets and books, but instead I get thrown back into the real world of Google search, Kindles and e-books, and Amazon. So good concept, but not quite good enough to hold my excitement.
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