Book review: Finna by Nino Cipri (LitenVerse #1)

 

 

Finna by Nino Cipri (LitenVerse #1)

103 pages, Paperback Published February , 2020 by Tor.com

Literary awards:Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novella (2021)

Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novella (2020)

Locus Award Nominee for Best Novella (2021)

Lambda Literary Award Nominee for Transgender Fiction (2021)

 

Sometimes a concept is so simple that you just feel silly that you didn’t think of it first. Finna is a book that sure suggests the idea that the author was lost inside an Ikea and it all came to them. This is another fine entry in the Tor Novella series that has not really ever let me down. It is also an example of unique story and Authorial voice that we are lucky enough to get in part because this series allows this big publisher to experiment in a way those of us who read indie publishers are used to. 

 Nino Cipri Is an author I can’t say I am familiar with big this fun little book has my attention and I will check out more by them. 

Published a month before the CoronaVirus Finna is a fun light-hearted SF bizarro tale set in a Swedish Big Box store that is called LitenVärld (Swedish for “small world”), not IKEA. It is totally not IKEA at all. The author absolutely never worked at an IKEA. Maybe they did, or didn’t I would guess they did but I shouldn’t assume. I have been mistaken for writing autobiographically when I wasn’t. Jules and Ava are in the middle of a breakup and avoiding working the same shift at Not-Ikea. So it is uncomfortable when they end up and on the same shift in the labyrinth store. 

 They end up working together to help a woman find her lost Grandmother, and it is bad enough trying to navigate a Not-Ikea but add in wormholes and dimensional portals and you have an adventure.  If that was not enough Jules and Ava end up being confronted by monster furniture with an appetite for humans, a veritable multiplicity of furniture sales associates and while minding their training for their capitalist overlords.

 Perhaps some of the other Not-Ikeas who have mock-up Show rooms. Would you be picking from Edgelord Rockabilly Dorm Room,The Nihilist Bachelor Cube, Parental Basement Dweller, or the Midlife Crisis Mom room...

Thumbs up. I really enjoyed this novella if I wasn't prepping for PKD fest I would probably have given a more thoughtful review.