Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore -- Take 2

I'm not quite sure what all the hype was about with Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.  Maybe people who read books just liked the idea of a book about a bookstore.  But it was okay at best.

I listened to the audio, and it had the narrative feel of Ready Player One, though it was significantly shorter.  And I admit that I did find it more interesting in than RPO in that it was about books rather than video games.  Through the middle of Mr. Penumbra, I wanted to keep listening, so that was at least a partial success.

However, I wasn't disappointed by the end of RPO the way I was with this.  I just asked myself, "That was it?" when the last CD ended.  (The fact that I loaded everything only my iPod rather than listening to the actual CDs probably contributed to that element of surprise, because I had no idea how close to the end of the story I was.)  It felt abridged, like someone had hacked off the second half of the story, even though it wasn't and they didn't.  Skip it.