Clay Jannon could hardly imagine ending up as a clerk in a strange old bookstore.
But his technological future in Silicon Valley was shattered into a thousand pieces and he had to look for alternatives, new paths in which to find a way of life.
In a way, his disenchantment with technology led him to that bookstore. But what he could never imagine was that everything was part of the same ...
At first, many things seemed extremely strange in that year-round bookstore. His area of untouchable books, as his boss, Mr. Penumbra, insisted; his clients who hardly bought books and who leafed through copies with mysterious cadence; its atmosphere suffocating for some sense of decadent temporary limbo ...
The night shift at his new job sometimes turns into a strange pilgrimage, a kind of impromptu outing for souls. And of course Clay has his limit of curiosity ...
Little by little the young man will observe with greater attention, approaching the old books, observing what they contain.
When some of his best-gifted friends, geeks from all the creative and analytical fields of the technological field who navigate their concerns around Silicon Valley, know and look at the messages of one of those books, the matter begins to give off an aroma of great mystery .
The disappearance of the owner of the bookstore only increases the growing enigmas.
When the clues to the owner's disappearance point to New York, Clay decides to travel to the Big Apple. The discovery of the link with the secret society of Unbroken Spine will end up closing a circle around which Clay will be able to learn many great secrets that justify everything ...
You can now buy the novel Mr. Penumbra and his 24-hour bookstore, Robin Sloan's debut feature that shook the US publishing market, here: