"Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore", by Robin Sloan

What a cool cover! Also I think it glows in the dark?

Listed as science-fiction, "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" reads almost like magical realism-- the best of which makes you feel as though you could turn a corner in any city in the world and stumble into something you could never have imagined. This book is like that-- set in an ambiguously close future, so familiar it's easy to believe whole-heartedly. The main character is an out-of-work nerdy art-school graduate whose only real skills are basic coding and typography, and in classic adventure-novel style (the book is, at least partially, a tribute to absurd fantasy novels we all read in our youth), becomes not only the main character but the hero. Being a (soon-to-be) out-of-work art-school graduate myself, I feel personally validated by seeing a hero whose life is so close to mine, in a future so close to reality.

As books about books often are, "Mr. Penumbra" is a love-letter to the written and printed word, but unlike others of its kind, it embraces technology as a method of preserving and furthering literature. Technology is, in fact, what the mystery ends up hinging upon-- not only modern technology, but technology which has been around for so long, which is so fundamental, that we barely see it at all anymore.

For all of the things it has to say about technology and literature, "Mr. Penumbra" is, at heart, an adventure story for those of us who love adventure stories. It's about the reader becoming the hero, it's about mystery and quests in the real world. It's written for a generation of nerds who grew up reading adventure stories, longing for quests of their very own: it's wish-fulfillment, and it's very fulfilling.

I recommend it whole-heartedly.

Grade: A (very, very good)

Buy: Off of Amazon.