The LitenVerse Novellas
by Nino Cipri
Reviewed by Galen Strickland
Posted October 31, 2024
Finna / Defekt
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The next advance review book I have is Nino Cipri's debut novel, so I thought it was a good time to read their novella duology, which has the collective title of the LitenVerse. That refers to the retail franchise LitenVärld (Swedish for "little world"), a thinly-veiled fictional version of Ikea. I have never been to an Ikea, but I have heard stories about their confusing floor plan layout, as well as the inexpensive, and sometimes hard to assemble furniture. Imagine how worse Ikea would be if there were also maskhål inside their stores. A maskhål is a wormhole.
The story begins with Ava arriving for work as a replacement for Derek who had called in sick. Unfortunately, her shift corresponds with Jules' schedule, which is awkward since she had broken off their relationship just a few days before. Neither had been working at the store very long, and it didn't really matter how well they paid attention during orientation, since a major thing about the store, the maskhål, had not been discussed. A young woman comes to the customer service desk to report her grandmother, Ursula, is missing. Where she was last seen was the location of the latest maskhål opening. Being the two most recent hires, Ava and Jules are tasked with going into the maskhål to retrieve the woman. They are given the store's one and only FINNA, which is an electronic device Ava thinks looks like the trap from Ghostbusters. It has several buttons and lights, one of which is an arrow pointing the way towards the likely direction Ursula had gone.
The major problem with maskhål is that they are not just one alternate dimension from our reality. They connect to multiple other rifts in space-time, some of which are similar to our reality, others are very different. Dopplegangers abound. They never find Ursula, but think they know what happened to her. Since Jules had read the FINNA manual, they know they have the choice of finding a "close approximation" to the person they were seeking. In one reality they encounter clones of the man and woman they saw in an old video their manager, Tricia, had shown them shortly after Ursula's disappearance. Multiple versions of Mark and Dana are very suspicious of Ava and Jules, and they have to escape when they are told they will be brought before Mother. They manage to escape, and in so doing find a woman, Uzmala, who may be the close approximation they need to return to their own reality. I don't want to say much more, but one thing that came to mind was how could they be certain the world they returned to was their world. It could be a very close duplicate, one which also contained an Ava and a Jules who worked at a LitenVärld.
The author is non-binary, and so is Jules. One thing I found refreshing is their assigned gender at birth was never mentioned, or if it was I missed it. Another thing I might have missed was the reveal of the location of this particular, LitenVärld, but the second novella says the Chicago suburbs. But again, is it the same location at beginning and end of the story. In addition to an exciting alternate universe adventure, it is also a study of a relationship that may have worked if given more time, but both Ava and Jules were still trying to figure themselves out, and until that happened they might not be able to commit to anything long term. It is also an anti-capitalist tale, of how corporations take advantage of their employees, how retail can be soul-crushing. In the afterword to the second novella, Nino says FINNA was intended as a standalone, but they would not mind fanfic written about the further adventures of Ava and Jules. Ava might not love Jules, but she does care for them, and after bringing Uzmala back to the woman who accepts her as her grandmother (and Uzmala goes along with it), Ava takes it upon herself to go back into the maskhål to find Jules, who had voluntarily stayed behind to enable their escape. I am hoping Nino reconsiders and writes of their further adventures.
Finna was published in 2020, and was a finalist for Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards..
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Posted October 31, 2024
Defekt won the British Fantasy Award, and was finalist for PKD and Locus. Its central character is Derek, the one who called in sick, which placed Ava in the postion to experience the maskhål in the first story. It starts the day before those events, and includes scenes with Derek and Jules, then when Derek returns to the store after his sick day, he learns of the maskhål, and the disappearnces of Jules and Ava. Derek was the ideal LitenVärld employee, always going the extra mile to help the customers and impress his manager. He knew if he had been there he would have volunteered to go into the maskhål. If he only knew why he was that way. Tricia, the manager, is a repulsive individual, always critical of her employees, even one as good as Derek. That is because she knows the true nature of LitenVärld, and why Derek is the way he is. As bad as Tricia is, she pales in comparison to Reagan, a representative of Corporate Resource Management. Even though LitenVärld had a stated sick leave policy, they didn't like it if anyone used it. As punishment, Derek is assigned a special overnight inventory duty. Not the typical type of inventory though. Instead, it is the tracking of potential defekta, defective products. Defective products which had been produced in one of the other alternate realities and brought through a maskhål to be sold in the store. It saved LitenVärld a lot of money on shipping costs from other regions, and supposedly negated any carbon footprint on Earth. Yet defective in this case meant products that had evolved, becoming animate objects.
You may have heard the phrase, "who watches the watchers?" The four person corporate inventory team are eerily similar to Derek. Not exact duplicates, but apparently from the same genetic stock. Dirk is the nominal leader, whom Derek initially admires, but later he realizes Dirk's over-bearing nature. Derek thinks he is a bit too much like Dirk, and that is why no one liked him. He never learns another's real name, but is told to call him Darkness. Then there is Delilah, a female version of Derek, as well as Dex, who seems to have been arrested in adolecence, a typical self-absorbed teenager. It is remarkable how many defekta they find, some of which are malevolent, others benign. Derek begins to wonder if he is a defecta himself, and it becomes clear he had come from another reality. He had no memory of his life before he started working at LitenVärld, and he has had little life outside LitenVärld. Even where he lives, an apartment constructed inside a shipping container, is on company property. Has he ever ventured away from the store, and if so, why can't he remember? If he is a defekta, what can he do about it? Can he align with other defekta and escape LitenVärld? Will any of his apparent clones join him?
Even more anti-capitalist than the first story. While exaggerated for effect, with the speculative elements mixed in, it is still a revealing look into the insanity of corporate thought and action, and a rally cry for worker solidarity. Both stories are very good, and I can't rate one above the other. FINNA would have been better if longer, if we were witness to Ava finding and reuniting with Jules, even if only as friends. Both stories examine the frustration of people trying to find their place in the world, when almost everything seems designed to see them fail.
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