Thanks to recommendations from Goodreads, for June I discovered Mr. Penumbra’s 24 hour bookstore. I wanted something fun and light, yet a little different for my vacation  read (Anna Karenina, while from the right country, is a bit too heavy and tragic for the occasion), and this was perfect. Even the cover is fun, light and a little different!

Spoilers ahead!

From the book description, I thought he was going to discover the entrance to Wonderland in the book store (or at least a find out that the book store was Tardis like – bigger on the inside), but the book was actually firmly entrenched in the realms of modern day reality. Instead of Wonderland, with the help of lots of modern technology (it’s scary how much technology can do), he discovers some sort of cult, goes on a covert mission, and helps decode a centuries old mystery. A little Dan Brown like, but lighter. There were no magic or dark rituals. They even have a perfectly logical explanation for why they have to wear long hoods into the underground room. Not because they’re about to perform a cult ritual, but to protect the contents of the room.

The only stretch of the imagination was how far technology can take you. From simple things like building virtual libraries, to commanding an army of invisible minions somewhere to do something that would normally take a few days, in less than a hour. It sounds so cool, it makes me want to go to Codeacademy.com and take up computer programming immediately!

All in all, a good vacation read. The plot was intriguing, and the story itself was well written and fun to read. No wonder GoodReads ranked it as one of the top fictions of 2012!