Review: A novel to get you thinking
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 25, 2011
For those of us who love to read and love our eReaders (I have two, one of them being a Kindle the other being another brand), the title of this book is totally captivating.  When I read the product description, I had to purchase it and the price was definitely right to take a chance on an author I was unfamiliar with.The premise of the story is that a new technological device has come along - the Gizmo - that does everything.  It's a phone, an MP3-type device and an eReader all combined into one handy gadget.  The comparisons to Amazon's own Kindle are obvious but with even more capability than just reading books.  Everyone in America has one of these handy dandy devices and just what does that mean for the bookstores selling traditional, paper books?  In our narrative, that means the demise of the bookshop and they are slowing closing with only a handful remaining.  Throughout the novel, they close one by one until only "The Firebreathing Dragon" remains.  How has it managed to not only stay open but make a tidy profit along the way, providing the financial support for the owner and two employees?  We find out when the owner dies and passes along not the bookstore and his home to his long-lost nephew.  The nephew and his wife come to Eureka, California to see what's what and discover a town filled with interesting characters and a culture vastly different than the one they left behind in the big city.  Should they give up the fast-paced lifestyle which has left them in debt up to their ears to continue running the quirky bookstore or should they sell and take the money?  Just how much is the bookstore making and how are they making anything in this out-of-the-way hamlet?  All these questions and more get answered.  In addition, the exploration of how this situation has evolved and the implication to the reading public will get the reader thinking about this very possibility.For originality and writing style, I definitely give this novel kudos.  A novel that I finished many days ago but still haunts me with the idea of an alternative world I am not too crazy about.  The setting of Eureka is described very well and the town itself becomes an intricate part of the work.  The number of characters is just about perfect - enough to give the story life but not enough to overwhelm the reader.  The characters themselves are quirky and interesting and I wanted to know more about them.  This is where the novel lost one star for me:  the characters weren't developed as much as I would have hoped.  I really liked them and found them fascinating, just not enough about them so felt I was left hanging just a bit.  Other than that, a wonderful novel that I enjoyed from beginning to end.