Clay Jannon used to design the website of NewBagel, a San Francisco startup that made the perfect bagel, based on an algorithm. Shape. Texture. Taste. All perfected with NewBagel's recipe. But then the Recession arrived, taking NewBagel with it. Clay was left to online reading and halfhearted searching for job opportunities in his apartment shared by a movie set designer and an android-like PR professional. One night, Clay walks into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a building that, in the front, appears to be an ordinary bookstore. But if you walk into the back room, you discover the towering shelves of books, three stories high, each book with a strange title... Mr. Penumbra, the establishment's elderly, sharp-witted owner, offers Clay a job as a night clerk. Clay soon discovers that the bookstore is even stranger than he was expecting--not many people come to the 24-hour bookstore, and when they do, they belong to a small group of eccentrics who check out the mysterious books on the back shelf. Further investigation and help from his friends and acquaintances, including his middle school best friend Neel Shah (who is now, conveniently, the rich founder of a middleware company) and his new Googler girlfriend Kat Potente, Clay begins to get an idea of what's really going on at the bookstore--or so he thinks.
The voice is also absolutely brilliant. Sloan is the John Green of the 20-something's voice. He perfectly captures Clay's tone, just the right measure of grown-up reason and teenagerish quirks. There's a rhythm to it, that strange thing that happens when you flip through the pages of a book and, from scattered words that you manage to catch before the next page comes along, you can feel the flow. It snaps along at places, and sometimes it pours in a Dickens-style stream. A little touch of slam-poetry offbeat here and there, then a smooth rush of measured words and sentences for sneaking around. Bouncing exclamation points running in excited circles--then slow, heavy periods dropping into place. Long dashes. It's hard to demonstrate this varied-yet-unified voice with a single quote, but I hope I have given you some idea of what it's like.
All that doesn't even begin to touch on the mystery in Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. For all its messages about society and for all its lovely writing style, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore is a mystery, and the mystery changes. What we want to know by the end ends up being nothing like what we initially thought was the goal. This change occurs so subtly, as you are caught up in the swirl of the rest of things. Discoveries are made that change the whole trajectory, and they're such amazing discoveries that the change makes perfect sense--so much so that you don't notice it. At the final culmination of all the discoveries and developments (which, being a bit of a "big reveal", is the book's only weakness), you feel all of the protagonists' work about to pay off, and it's great.
I apologize for not being able to give you a slightly more comprehensive review, but it has been a month since I read this book (so extremely caught up in general life and also Shadowmarch by Tad Williams--review hopefully coming before Christmas), and so my memories of even its amazing qualities have faded slightly. This only proves true the wonderful line on the last page of the book: "After that, this book will fade, the way all books fade in your mind" (p. 288). I've read quite a few books that self-acknowledge their existential state as a book, but none that, at the very end, made themselves more memorable by telling you that yes, you will forget this a little--or a lot. Perhaps it is a weakness that, right before the bit I just quoted, Sloan blatantly lists a lot of what you're meant to take away from his novel. But it's also a good way to be sure you will remember it, and that, if you forget, it's all in one convenient place. It could be interpreted as cheesily bombastic, or brilliant and unique. I'm not sure if this is Sloan's first novel, but if it is, then the ending certainly counts as a strength. A more established author might be too afraid to try something like that. I also have a fondness for these types of endings, since that was rather how I ended the only book that I have finished, fully edited, and made a copy of (hopefully one day soon I'll publish it). It ends with the mysterious philosopher wandering off into the night, having accomplished what he wanted to. I list all his favored adjectives that are the best way he can describe the universe--amazing, astounding, wonderful, magnificent, to name a few. Then there's a few sentences about random occurrences and philosophy and infinity, and you may interpret whether or not it is spoken, or merely exists.
In short, I would recommend this book to everyone. It applies to us all as we make this strange transition, and it's simply a fabulous mystery. Penumbra is more than he seems, and so is his store. Clark Moffat is just as important as you think he's going to be. Those who take an extreme stance do not survive for very long. Of course there's a cult. What's not to love?