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

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Robin Sloan
ISBN: 9780374214913
Finished May 20, 2014

There are people who jump into swimming pools, or into the ocean.  It's perhaps mid-April, she's on spring break, she's got her bathing suit on, and she is GOING.  A shiver of antici...pation (shush, I had to), a quick run, a smallish hop, a splash, and she's IN.

I am not that person.  I am the person who sits on the edge of the dock and pokes her toes in with a worried crease in her forehead, thinking about temperatures and wind-chill and leg cramps.  I am the person who sits on the warm concrete edge of the swimming pool with her legs in - ONLY her legs in - and watches the rest of the group swarm around the water like mayflies.

I don't jump.  I am not an "early adopter."  Hype makes me nervous.  The more people who shove a specific thing in my face with the breathless exhortation "My God this is PERFECT for you!" the more nervous I get, and the longer I hold off.  In this case, about umpty billion people (even patrons whose names I don't actually know) shoved this book at me with frantic intensity.

It was too much.  I couldn't take it.  The book (already purchased, because I did read a review and think "I might like this" before I got shoved at by everyone) ended up in the purgatory that is the back seat of my car.  For MONTHS.  I bought this book NEW.  In October.  Do you want to count how many months that is?  It's a depressing number.

I swung my legs in that pool for more than half a year.

Why?  I was afraid.  I don't like dreary.  I don't like depression (scuse me: "realism") I have enough of that in my own life, thanks.  I don't like to be wrapped up in a lovely story and have it fizzle out, or take a strange turn at Albuquerque.  I don't like to fall in love with characters and have them beheaded or raped (looking at you, GRRM).  I don't like gritty.  I don't like "snappy dialogue" that's actually mean-spirited snark that comes from entitled or arrogant or superior bastards.

I worry a lot.  As fast and as much as I read, you'd think that it wouldn't bother me this much, but I want to read things that are uplifting and heartwarming, and when I get a bait-and-switch, it's like being gut-punched.  It's horrid.

I finally slipped into the water on Monday.  God as my witness, this water is HEAVENLY.

Reviews elsewhere do the review thing.  I just want to gush for a bit.

I'm so glad I bought it.  I want to wander around for a week or so, clutching it to my chest and luxuriating in the happy fugue that comes from scarfing down a story that started great, stayed great, and finished with a beautifully satisfying ending AND AN EPILOGUE!

I'm revealing myself as a giant nerd here, but I spent my college days playing Mage, the World of Darkness game system developed by White Wolf.  This book reads like a beautiful Mage chronicle, in the lightest grey World of Darkness possible.  The synthesis of nostalgia for my college games (and, let's be honest here - my college years) and the breathless frantic intensity of the cutting-edge Google projects and post-recession uncertainty was like manna.  

I swear, people should stop recommending things to me.  I would get in a lot faster if people just stopped hassling me about how nice the water is.