Title: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Author: Robin Sloan
Publisher: HarperCollins (2012)
ISBN: 978-144-34-1580-4
Pages: ebook, 256 pages
First published: 2012
Literary Awards: ALA Alex Award (2013), The Kitschies Nominee for Golden Tentacle (Debut) (2013)
Sinopsis:
The Great Recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a web-design drone, and serendipity, sheer curiosity and the ability to climb a ladder like a monkey have landed him a new gig working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But Clay begins to realize that this store is even more curious than its name suggests. There are only a few customers, but they come in repeatedly and never seem to actually buy anything. Instead they check out impossibly obscure volumes from strange corners of the store, all according to some elaborate, long-standing arrangement with the gnomic Mr. Penumbra. The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he has embarked on a complex analysis of the customers’ behaviour and roped his friends into helping him figure out just what’s going on. But once they take their findings to Mr. Penumbra, they discover the secrets extend far beyond the walls of the bookstore.
Evoking both the fairy-tale charm of Haruki Murakami and the enthusiastic novel-of-ideas wizardry of Neal Stephenson or Umberto Eco, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is exactly what it sounds like—an establishment you have to enter and will never want to leave.
OK, mungkin aku sedikiiiit overrated, tapi buku ini membawaku berpetualang dengan imajinasi edan tentang toko buku tua yang berdebu bercampur teknologi terbaru yang digawangi Google, ILM dan berbagai keajaiban binari lainnya, dari peninggalan sejarah berupa Font lawas sampai cerita tentang secret society yang mencari kehidupan abadi, tak ketinggalanperpustakaan rahasia jauh di bawah tanah ala game Dungeons and Dragons(!) ^^, semuanya diselingi dengan humor-humor tentang kecanggungan teknologi antar generasi serta keterbatasan teknologi itu sendiri.
