Nino CipriBesprekingen

Clever idea, but the bitchy protagonists wore out their welcome.

Fascinating book of multiversal reality linked into an IKEA pastiche/parody. Great characters with an intriguing nonbinary character

Some of these stories gave me the creeps in all the best ways!!! I liked the time travel one and the space weasel one the best.

I found the concept interesting, if a bit on the nose about the Scandinavian Big Box Store�Û_ I liked the novella enough, but it fell a bit flat for me. Almost if it was trying too hard? Or maybe it needed more time/pages to feel fully fleshed out.

I really liked this, maybe better than Finna iirc. It's hopeful to imagine that corporate greed and stupidity contains the seeds of its own destruction and replacement by better and more interesting forms of life....

Weird little story that was quite enjoyable.
The gender identity of the characters did feel a little forced. Maybe it would have worked better in a longer story, now it felt a little tagged on.

This novella blew me away, such a great read. It reminded me strongly of Matt Haig's [b:The Midnight Library|52578297|The Midnight Library|Matt Haig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1602190253l/52578297._SY75_.jpg|74043794], except so much better, and a bit of [b:Wat wij zagen|57942162|Wat wij zagen|Hanna Bervoets|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1620114790l/57942162._SY75_.jpg|90785681], except much less depressing.

I will be looking up more stories by this author, what a great find.

4.5 stars. i went into this sort of blind and i was happily surprised. i need the sequel asap!

Such a weird collections of queer, oddball stories. I really enjoyed all of them, though I found the last and longest to be a little dry. Maybe if the space weasels were still alive and involved it would have helped. I liked the story in voice recordings, that felt very gothic horror in short form. I wish the ocean under the couch story was longer! In all, a great diverse and twisted collection.

I was not expecting another book in the Finna universe, but I was certainly delighted to discover that there was one! I loved Finna SO MUCH that I really didn't see how this book was going to compare, but I loved this one as well!

Finna basically starts with "Fucking Derek," and here in Defekt, we get to finally meet Derek, the model employee to Ava's walking disaster. Derek seems to have almost no needs, and seems to exist entirely to please, but it seems that he is somehow skating on thin ice with management as well?

But of course, this is Finna-verse, so the inhumanity of our capitalist employment landscape turns out to be literally inhumane. Or at least, very very weird. Furniture starts coming to life, there are clones and parallel universes... wait. That is also all to be expected with a Finna-verse! I guess the close are new.

I loved Derek SO HARD. The weirdness of it all, the politics and the heart of it all? Were so up my alley. Cipri is a gift.

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.

This was creepy and weird in good ways. Love the amount of hating on capitalism it did, and love wondering what universe I'm in.

Hilarious novella involving disgruntled customer service workers (at an IKEA-like store), liminal spaces, wormholes, and carnivorous furniture. Ava and Jules, who broke up very recently, must go on an adventure together.

Very queer.

OMG there is a sequel.

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 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.

Ava and Jules have just broken up. Ava's been careful to rearrange her work schedule so they won't have to see one another while things are so fresh and awkward. But when she gets called in on her day off, those carefully arranged plans go out the window. Things go from bad to worse when a portal to another universe opens up and someone's granny wanders in. Tricia – who's about the Karen-est manager ever – assigns Ava and Jules to go after her.

This story confronts the realities of Capitalism Gone Wild and navigates the murky waters of life outside heteronormative Sameland.

It's a little bit Discworld meets Suburban Everytown, USA.

The setting, premise, concept and characters were good. The plot was okay, the relationship I didn't care about, and the attitude towards the capitalist machine just read juvenile. I think this would have been better as a fully fleshed out novel. As it is, it just didn't make me care about anything.

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.

Finna and Defekt are books #1 and #2 in the LitenVerse series by Nino Cipri. Novella length books, they are both fantasies set in an alternate timeline, where most of the action takes place in and around a Swedish big box home store called LitenVärld (in an obvious reference to Ikea). I listened to the audiobooks of both novellas, checked out through Libby from my local library.

Defekt has a timeline that slightly overlaps Finna, but centers on another employee of the Chicago LitenVärld named Derek. He’s an odd duck. An overly loyal employee, he lives in a shipping container at the end of the parking lot. Derek is plagued by feelings of inadequacy and of not belonging but he takes tremendous pride in his work and the praise that comes from his manager. One day he develops a weird throat infection, and, with some prompting from Jules, determines that he’s due a sick day and calls off from work.

This does not sit well with the manager, who assigns Derek to an overnight inventory of the store, staffed by an offsite team. Suddenly he's face to face with employees who all seem to be clones - of him. To complicate matters they aren’t really doing an inventory, but are exterminating “defective” pieces of furniture and household items among those that LitenVärld has sourced from other universes (in a rush to the cost-of-goods bottom) - pieces that have the unfortunate tendency to come to life and attack people.

Defekt is told from Derek’s perspective, and Ramon De Ocampo brings just the right amount of company-nerd gusto to the narration.

On Cipri’s website they give the trigger warning for Defekt that it has “graphic violence against anthropomorphic furniture.” That should give you some idea of the keen and quirky sense of humor that animates both books. Both poke at capitalism and elevate marginalized folks.

Also on their website Cipro describes themselves this way - “Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator”, and both books have queer and transgender characters.

Of the two audiobooks I liked Defekt best. But both were lots of fun to listen to.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Finna and Defekt are books #1 and #2 in the LitenVerse series by Nino Cipri. Novella length books, they are both fantasies set in an alternate timeline, where most of the action takes place in and around a Swedish big box home store called LitenVärld (in an obvious reference to Ikea). I listened to the audiobooks of both novellas, checked out through Libby from my local library.

In Finna a young woman stops at the customer service desk at the Chicago LitenVärld to report that her grandmother seems to have gone missing. It’s not an unusual occurrence at the big box chain, as the stores are laid out as an interconnecting set of rooms, each a showcase for the products of a particular LitenVärld line. This labyrinth of rooms often confuses customers. It also seems to have a confusing effect on the space time continuum, which means that LitenVärld stores are often plagued with wormholes to other universes. Turns out Grandma has disappeared down a wormhole, and two employees, Ava and Jules, are “volun-told” to go after her.

Our two heroes succeed in their mission, after a fashion, but they have to face a series of challenges over a set of strange worlds, as well as their own unresolved tension from their recent breakup. The book tells the story from Ava’s perspective, and the narration is ably handled by Amanda Dolan.

On Cipri’s website they give the trigger warning for Defekt that it has “graphic violence against anthropomorphic furniture.” That should give you some idea of the keen and quirky sense of humor that animates both books. Both poke at capitalism and elevate marginalized folks.

Also on their website Cipro describes themselves this way - “Nino Cipri is a queer and trans/nonbinary writer, editor, and educator”, and both books have queer and transgender characters.

RATING: Four Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐

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.

So, a friend reminded me that Dzanc Books existed on a day when I was feeling pandemic stir-crazy, so of course I immediately headed over to their website to pick out a few books. This one I chose despite my resistance to short stories because I had been following Nino Cipri on twitter, the description sounded amazing, and when I checked the Goodreads reviews I saw that a few of my bookstagram friends had already read it and loved it.

I ENDED UP A LITTLE BIT FERAL ABOUT THIS BOOK AND I HAVE BEEN SCREAMING AT EVERYONE I KNOW TO BUY/READ CIPRI'S BOOKS EVER SINCE. While of course some stories worked better for me that others, there was no filler. I fell in love/smit/maternal-caregiving-mode with so many characters, was pleasantly surprised where some of these stories went, and would like to camp out on the author's lawn to demand more of the world of "Before We Disperse Like Star Stuff."

This was such a random purchase but I am SO GLAD I made it!

This was a cute sci-fi/fantasy romp. I like the multiverse premise and enjoyed some of the humor. I saw somewhere that this was compared to the Hitchhiker's Guide series, and I think that comparison is apt. However, the characters weren't super compelling to me. I wanted them to be developed more separate from watching them react to their environment. Nonetheless, I will probably read more in this series as they come out. I think there is great potential for the series.

Even stranger than the first book in this series, and a very enjoyable quick read.½

I picked this up on a whim from my library's new book shelf and couldn't put it down. It's short and fast paced, and delightfully weird. I love Ikea, but I love Ikea horror just about as much - it is the perfect setting for something like this.

Ava and Jules recently had a painful breakup, which is made worse by the fact that they both work at the same LitenVärld, an IKEA knockoff store. When a coworker calls in sick, Ava reluctantly agrees to come in only to discover that Jules is also working that day. Then a customer's grandmother goes missing, and Ava and Jules are suddenly forced to work together to find the woman, a task that will involve traveling through multiple wormholes to multiple LitenVärld variations.

I checked this out for multiple reasons. First, I needed an audiobook that could get me through the ride to and from the airport, and this was almost exactly the length I needed. Second, the description made me think "Horrorstör but sci-fi." I still haven't been inside an actual IKEA, but I seem to be drawn to stories set in IKEA knockoffs.

Sadly, this didn't really work for me, and I might not have finished it if it hadn't been for the whole "captive audience in need of something to listen to" airport trip. It started off okay (I really liked Ava's names for the various LitenVärld display rooms, like the "Nihilist Bachelor cube"), but I felt like it wasted its parallel universe LitenVärld potential. Ava and Jules traveled to, if I remember correctly, maybe three different parallel universe LitenVärlds, but only one of them was recognizable as a store. I was really hoping for more skewed big-box store moments, although I did like the chair in the first one.

Ava and Jules' relationship issues were a drag to listen to. Ava was the one who'd initiated the breakup, in large part due to the strain her own anxiety plus Jules' more adventurous and risk-taking personality put her under. Jules (a nonbinary character) had their own baggage, and as a result the two of them never really sat down and talked any of it through, so it was hurt feelings and strain all around. Meanwhile, I just wanted freaky LitenVärld variations.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)