Finna

December 7, 2021 4:47 AM

When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store ― but not that one ― slips through a portal to another dimension, it’s up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company’s bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.
posted by Literaryhero (6 comments total)

Someone on MeFi mentioned this book, but for the life of me I can't remember who or where. Anyway, it is short and snappy, but I really would like to know more about the universe (or multiverse I guess). Some of the stuff doesn't really make a lot of sense, but I am willing to overlook it since the story is good.
posted by Literaryhero at 4:50 AM on December 7, 2021

There's a sequel, Defekt, if you're interested in more world-building. I actually preferred it - this one quickly felt like it became a normal multiverse story where it didn't matter as much as I wanted it to that the multiverse was centered on an Ikea. Defekt takes place entirely in the store.
posted by Ragged Richard at 6:52 AM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

I'm very fond of this one. It pretty much won me over when, in the second chapter, there was a cheaply produced corporate video explaining what to do when a wormhole opens up in your furniture store.

Between this and Horrorstör, sff novels set in Ikea knockoffs may now be a legitimate subgenre.
posted by kyrademon at 3:57 PM on December 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

There's a sequel, Defekt, if you're interested in more world-building. I actually preferred it - this one quickly felt like it became a normal multiverse story where it didn't matter as much as I wanted it to that the multiverse was centered on an Ikea. Defekt takes place entirely in the store.

Awesome, I am in! I hadn't realized there was another one.

Between this and Horrorstör, sff novels set in Ikea knockoffs may now be a legitimate subgenre.

Awesomer, I have more books for the reading list. :)
posted by Literaryhero at 7:12 PM on December 7, 2021

I felt similarly to RaggedRichard. The multiverse-hopping adventure was very generic YA. Credit for the book having quite a good ending, in the sense that it built naturally upon the preceding story. It was just odd that the book's main selling point - the mundane/creepy !Ikea - was largely irrelevant to the (otherwise well-constructed) story. I suppose that's a failure of marketing as much as anything else.

On the other hand Defekt was everything I'd wanted from its predecessor. And the good will earned by that book has made me slightly fonder of Finna in hindsight. I'm happier having read both than had I read neither.
posted by Lorc at 3:48 AM on December 8, 2021 [1 favorite]

I didn't know there was a sequel!

I'll have to reread this one, then read that.
posted by Tabitha Someday at 7:50 AM on December 8, 2021