Comment

May 01, 2013
It starts out like a fine mystery. The protagonist, Clay Jannon, is hired by a San Francisco independent bookstore owner -- Mr Penumbra -- to retrieve books from 10 pm to 6 am, at the request of long time bookstore customers holding an unusual interest in highly obscure volumes. In fact Clay has never heard of any of these book titles, which are never purchased, only loaned. When Clay examines one of these books, he sees page after page of unreadable encrypted characters, no spaces, no punctuation. Yet the customers return night after night, returning one book, and taking another. At this point, about 10% in, the story looks like it has potential. Then the whole thing degenerates into a sort of "Dungeons and Dragons" meets Google:Books fantasy. The story fails to hold the reader's interest. I can't recommend this one. One word summary: Tedious.