Finna

This manages to be both a romp from start to finish, and sad and tragic at various times. Starting in a knock-off IKEA, the story forces exes Ava and Jules together -- there is a lot of unfinished business that starts getting sorted out in this slight book, and yet that is somehow the B plot.

The world building is exquisite - from the very start, with Ava getting off the bus, then through the various alternate worlds that our protagonists get thrown through. The characters are equally well written, being unhappy and broken but entirely sympathetically written. Unlike other very depressed and anxious characters, Ava does not seem over wrought, nor unbelievable. And on top of all this, the author has managed to fit in a biting commentary show more on big box stores, corporate culture, and the evils of capitalism.

Highly recommended. show less

Listen. I have convinced more people to go out and buy a copy of this book, read it and LOVE it than any other book, excepting the two I have published myself. This is a fun, weird, messy multi-verse portal fantasy (sort of) with a queer relationship falling apart and made up of critiquing the inhuman economics of corporate big-box chain stores. It's got spectacularly weird world-building and the way our bullshit capitalist systems exacerbate mental illness, and finding yourself in the face of absurdity.

I loved this book fiercely and I have spent a lot of time screaming at people about how much.

{First of 2(?) LitenVerse series; urban fantasy, parallel universes, adventure} (2020)

This was an intriguing concept where two workers (just-broken-up partners) work in ho-hum jobs at a furniture store (with a sky blue and sunflower yellow logo, so not one you'd know) and discover a dimensional wormhole. Apparently this is a not unheard of occurrence and connects our world's version of LitenVärld with LitenVärlds in other universes, some of which may be inimical. Since staff cutbacks have dispensed with the division that deals with such wormholes, Ava and her ex, Jules (who is genderless and very touchy about being assigned a gender by customers), are - as the two newest employees - volunteered to find the elderly customer who has show more wandered across the divide with only the 'FINNA' device and a quick viewing of a video (as in on a VHS cassette) to help them. The FINNA can locate the missing customer and then point the way back to our universe in case the original wormhole collapses.

Since the original wormhole does collapse, they have to work their way back to our Earth via other worlds, each with their own unique version of LitenVärld. And their own unique dangers.

Told from Ava's point of view, the book also deals with the relationship between the two protagonists. I found the different versions of the world interesting but the book was quite short and didn't really have time to explore the worlds nor for me to establish a rapport with the characters; there were some instances where I thought I should have been shocked but I was still processing the different worlds and so they just felt like part of the narrative.

I also found the use of 'them', 'they' etc in referring to Jules quite confusing, especially when the words were used in both the singular and plural (referring to both Jules and Ava together) in the same paragraph although I appreciate that both Jules and the author don't want to be assigned a gender.

I did enjoy the story, short as it was, and look forward to reading the sequel.

September 2021
3 stars show less

I got this book from the library because it was a) super thin and b) said "an anti-capitalist adventure" on the cover. It was such a blast! Imagine walking through Ikea and OOPSIE you accidentally walk into a wormhole where there is still furniture but it is alive and going to eat you. This is the start of what I hope is a long delicious LitenVarld series about the metaverse and all the different lives we could live. Super fun and definitely an adventure.

I read this novella as part of my Nebula finalist packet.

The concept of this snared me from the start: workers from a store blatantly based off IKEA, dealing with worm hole shenanigans in their store. As a night stocker who served time in Walmart lo many years ago, I think I had such close scrapes myself. The relationship drama between the two main characters grated on me for a while, as they verged on Too Stupid to Live Territory, but they soon found new priorities (i.e. staying alive in alternate dimension IKEAs where 'mother' is not exactly a loving figure toward presumed interlopers). The ending was full of delightful surprises, and left me with a big smile. In all, an incredibly fun novella, and I'd love to read more in the series.

Summer 2021 (June);

Another one I expected to love more than I did. I love the crazy concept of IKEA, though I don't shop there and I abhor most of what I have heard about their staff treatment. This treatise on it as a land with wormholes, being explored by two recently ex-lovers, one a lesbian and the other non-binary, and the salty old, empowered captain-pirate lady they find, should have been right up my alley. But, again, it just falls flatter than I wanted it to.

This felt short and rushed, and I wish we'd gotten more of everything on the other side of the portal. I wanted more focus on the portal world and the mental health rebuilding of the main character more than it all being contingent on their (even post-ending) codependence show more of worth based on the other main character. The thing the author seems to have gotten the most right and had the most fun with was 1-2 sentence descriptions of the cubby-setup rooms in the IKEA. Every single one of those made me smile. show less

I hadn't realised (or at least hadn't remembered) from reviews that this was a novella so its brevity took me by surprise. It was a fun read while it lasted though! The point-of-view character and her enby ex work in Totally-Not-Ikea, a furniture store so labyrinthine that periodically wormholes form leading to its counterpart in other parallel universes. They get voluntold to rescue a lost customer from one of these universes, and between the carnivorous furniture, hivemind foodcourt, and their personal and relationship baggage, much drama ensues. While the angst is real and complex, the dangers they face are mostly on the level of the absurd, so ultimately it's a fun and easy read.