Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, by Robin Sloan. Copyright 2012. Fiction. ISBN 9781250037756.

Story:

In 2012, the Great Recession has left many jobless, including one Clay Jonnin, a designer and programmer with only one award and less than a year of experience under his belt. Where his friends have visions, work for Google, or run multi-million dollar enterprises, he’s looking for work in San Francisco. He ends up in front of the eponymous bookstore.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a novel that attempts to reconcile the old world—that is, books, paper, and printing—with the new world: computers, programming, and immense archives of ebooks. It is a book for the nerdy (or geeky) booklover, blending technology, fantasy, and the real world together into a story about an enigmatic bookseller and the secret organization that lies just beneath the surface of his unassuming store.

Style and Technique:

In many ways, the book itself reflects the story. Mr. Penumbra’s cover is unassuming and not immediately attention-grabbing, just like the outside of Mr. Penumbra’s bookstore. In both cases, however, it’s the title that makes you look twice, and in both cases, you’re drawn into a story that’s more than it seems at first glance. (Also, the cover glows in the dark, so that’s a plus.)

The main mystery of Mr. Penumbra’s revolves around the strange, unintelligible books stocked by the San Francisco bookstore and the passionate allure they hold for the store’s patrons. This aspect is aided and abetted by more questions: How can the bookstore stay open if no one buys the books? Why does the store stock so few books that might actually appeal to a broader audience? Why 24 hours?

Unfortunately, as quirky and interesting as this may be to booklovers and geeks alike, the story is convenient and unbelievable. The motivations of the antagonists (left unsaid here to avoid spoilers) are silly and ridiculous, especially for a group of people who are supposed to be intelligent scholars, adept at researching and breaking codes. The plot cannot be taken seriously without swallowing a tablespoon of salt, and possibly one’s pride as well.

Sloan writes in first-person, present tense, using a character just bland enough (or with just enough personality) for nearly any reader to relate to and find likable. However, rather than seeing things through Clay’s eyes, the book is written as though Clay is describing everything to the reader. This can lead to separation of reader and book, with the reader feeling as though they are being told a story, instead of being truly immersed.

However, these faults do not mean that Mr. Penumbra’s is an unenjoyable book. It is clever in some parts, an interesting concept, and makes several references (some of them pretty meta) that readers will catch and be amused by (including references to a certain Mr. Moffat). Sloan also breaks a few of the golden rules of writing, which include things like “don’t introduce new characters or plotlines during your book’s climax.” In a book about breaking (or updating) the old rules, however, this doesn’t seem too out of place.

Characterization:

The book, set in 2012, includes a wide cast of characters of the new millennium, including the young who are tech-savvy (extremely, they all seem to know how to code, design, or program), and the older who are oblivious to or dislike new technologies. This could have made the book great. However, this means that the book is filled with references to Facebook, Google, and Twitter—references that are going to be obsolete, given five years or so. Furthermore, the presence of so many technological savants robs the book of its tension: The characters can find the answers to their questions by Googling. In fact, the character of Kat Potente has a job with Google, and can use their resources with little trouble. Clay’s millionaire friend who runs a graphics and animation tool company can supply him with any money he needs over the course of the book. His artist friend can make models of anything. At some point, the reader begins to wonder exactly why Clay is even needed in the first place.

The second kind of characters, the older people who are unfamiliar with technology, also have their own foibles. Corvina, the main antagonist, holds the view that all technological developments are evil and worthless, to the point where he becomes a clichéd caricature, all imperious looks and cloak-sweeping. Mr. Penumbra, on the other hand, makes a refreshing change in that he is eager to learn new technology and sees its value.

Sloan could have done better with fewer clichés and a focus on character depth instead of width, as a quiet book such as this one with a wide cast of two-dimensional characters does not make for an exciting read.

What need has the world for a 24-hour bookstore? When you read this book, you may as well ask what need has the world for technology and secrets as well. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a light, fast, and light-hearted read: entertaining, but with little depth. 3 out of 5 stars.

Buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Half-Price Books

The Archived

The Archived by Victoria Schwab. Copyright 2013. Young Adult Fiction. ISBN 1423157311.

Story:

The memories of the dead are stored in a strange library called the Archive, only accessible to specially trained persons through hidden doors in our world. Sometimes these Histories, as they’re called, wake up and escape the Archive. As a Keeper, it is 16-year-old Mackenzie Bishop’s job to send them back to the care of the Librarians, and she has her hands more than full when she and her family move into the Coronado: an old hotel-turned-apartment building that’s full of forgotten and unfinished stories.

Style and Technique:

The Archived immediately draws you in with a new take on the afterlife, a subject that’s held humanity’s attention for millennia. However, although the book starts strong, it begins to give off the impression that Schwab hasn’t fully fleshed out her world. The Why of the Archive itself isn’t explained: What is its purpose? Who’s the ultimate authority behind it? There is a potential for answers to these questions later in the series, as this is only the first book, but more information on how it works would do much to draw readers into the world and add to its believability factor.

Schwab’s grasp of setting is sometimes good and sometimes lacking. Our main character seems to travel between three different locations: the Archive, the Narrows, and the Coronado. Her description of the Narrows, the dimension in between our world and the Archive, is properly eerie and cold, and the Archive itself is quite interesting: Stacks and stacks of shelves and drawers running back as far as the eye can see. However, where the Archive and the Narrows are the better-described settings, the Coronado and its different sections seem blank, generic, and sometimes confusing in contrast.

Schwab writes in a very “present” tense—that is, both in present tense as we are used to thinking of it, and also in a way that makes you feel as though you’re with Mackenzie as she wanders the Coronado. Her portrayal of the underlying mystery throughout the book is engaging and intriguing, and she’s left plenty of loose ends to keep readers interested in waiting for the second installment.

Characterization:

Mackenzie Bishop is our main character, a savvy sixteen-year-old who seems smarter and more aware than your average protagonist. She often picks up on things that authors of other books might illogically cause their characters to overlook. This trait is important to her character, as Mackenzie is a Keeper: one of those tasked with making sure the woken Histories don’t escape from the Narrows. In order to fill this position adequately, Mackenzie must be able to keep it separate from her real life—and in order to do that, she must be a very good liar. And she is.

However, for all the potential Mackenzie has, she herself seems to be rather flat, and remains static (rather than dynamic) throughout the book. Beyond the Keeper and the liar, not much about her stands out. She has no hobbies, she has no life outside of her job (such as it is, there is no mention of whether Keepers or other maintainers of the Archive are paid). And yet, despite this seeming lack of anything else to do, Mackenzie doesn’t seem to have any problem putting off returning the Histories she is assigned. This is unfortunate, as the premise is a fantastic opportunity to really build up the tension throughout the book. Instead, the book moves along at a brisk-but-peaceful walk with no sense of urgency until the last third of the story.

And then there is Wesley, a strange, self-obsessed boy who visits family at the Coronado and seems to keep running into people. Schwab tries to be coy with this character, dropping “hints” about who he is in Mackenzie’s encounters with him. Regrettably, Wesley’s character seems to barely move beyond “vain” and “guyliner.” Furthermore, although Schwab is to be applauded for not allowing the romance subplot of the book to become more than a subplot (a pitfall that ensnares many young adult authors), the romantic tension, where there is any, is typical and hardly fresh.

Strangely enough, it’s the secondary characters that Schwab does well with. These characters mostly populate the Narrows and the Archive (and, consequentially, are too spoilery to get too deep into description) and have picked up the habits and mannerisms of three-dimensional characters. There’s Roland, a Librarian in the Archive (strikingly reminiscent of David Tennant’s rendition of the Tenth Doctor), and Owen, an oddly sane boy stuck in the Narrows with a lot of loose ends to tie up. Both of these characters interest the reader in ways that other characters fall short.

Although Schwab’s secondary characters are worthy, she has unfortunately fallen into the habit of making minor characters little more than vehicles for the plot. Mackenzie’s parents are almost painfully cliché and dim-witted, Mackenzie’s best friend apparently exists only for Mackenzie to rehash what living in the Coronado is like. The other, few residents of the Coronado seem to exist only to give information to Mackenzie, and serve no other purpose. While it could be argued that that’s what minor characters are for, authors should make an attempt to give their minor characters lives that don’t revolve around the protagonist.

Victoria Schwab’s The Archived is an original, interesting pick that reads well at first look, but begins to fray at the edges upon further scrutiny. 3 out of 5 stars.

Buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble.

A Collection of Helpful Writing Articles and Tools

In the interim between reviews, every now and then I’d like to point out some excellent articles and tools I’ve come across around the web that deal with the many aspects of writing. As an English major and a novelist, I always want to assist and encourage other writers at whatever stage of writing.

Revising:

How will I know if I’m making it better, not worse?

When do you stop revising?

Scene Composition:

Things A Scene Needs

Dialogue:

Dialogue Writing Tips

Writing Believable Dialogue

Tools:

Character Survey

“The Mother Of All Character Questionnaires” (No, really. There are roughly 18.5 billion questions here.)

Fantasy World-building Questions (This is one of the most useful resources I’ve come across for fantasy writers. It asks questions about everything from religion and politics to trade and style of dress. Very exhaustive. Be prepared to set aside a few days to go through and answer it all. Also, check out Patrick Rothfuss’s advice on worldbuilding.)

50 British Insults (Beware this one at work, music automatically plays on this site.)

Kitten Motivation (I.e. this site gives you a fresh picture of a kitten for every hundred words you write.)

Write or Die (For those of you who are a little too hard-core for kittens [admit it, you only act tough], Write or Die has more serious consequences for those who don’t write fast enough.)

Write World’s Toolbox (A lovely conglomeration of tools and helpful articles on all sorts of aspects of writing: from plot to theme to editing, and a billion things in between.)

And finally, one of the best pieces of advice I’ve read about writing in a long time: “Treat all your secondary characters like they think the book’s about them.” -Jocelyn Hughes