paperback, 144 pages
English language
Published Feb. 25, 2020 by Tor.com.
Nino Cipri's Finna is a rambunctious, touching story that blends all the horrors the multiverse has to offer with the everyday awfulness of low-wage work. It explores queer relationships and queer feelings, capitalism and accountability, labor and love, all with a bouncing sense of humor and a commitment to the strange.
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.
To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.
Full disclosure: the author is an old friend of mine.
It was fun and sweet, hilarious at times, believably scary baddies, a nice resolution. The only thing I wish it had was more. More adventures in the multiverse.
A nice little novella. The premise was fun and I enjoyed reading it. It had science fiction, a little horror, a spot of class consciousness, and some sincere discussion of queer life and relationships. It was concise, which is not a criticism as it is a short book, and fit its character growth, plot, and world building in quite compactly.
Fantastic premise for traveling between worlds
It certainly was a book.
I knew it was a novella going into it, but I guess I was still expecting to find a little more meat on the bones than I did? This story felt very "safe" and on-rails: we have the call to adventure, the near-death experience that seems hopeless until the deus ex machina that introduces a new character, a heroic self-sacrifice and ultimately culminating in a open ending where it's not explicitly described but you know exactly what happens. It's not inherently a bad thing to have a formulaic story (there are only so many ways to construct a plot after all), but it was a little distracting to me just how aware I was of the tropes and the pacing while I was reading it. Maybe this was actually a YA book and I just didn't realize it until after I finished.
There's just not …
It certainly was a book.
I knew it was a novella going into it, but I guess I was still expecting to find a little more meat on the bones than I did? This story felt very "safe" and on-rails: we have the call to adventure, the near-death experience that seems hopeless until the deus ex machina that introduces a new character, a heroic self-sacrifice and ultimately culminating in a open ending where it's not explicitly described but you know exactly what happens. It's not inherently a bad thing to have a formulaic story (there are only so many ways to construct a plot after all), but it was a little distracting to me just how aware I was of the tropes and the pacing while I was reading it. Maybe this was actually a YA book and I just didn't realize it until after I finished.
There's just not a lot here, at least not to me. I'm probably going to forget much of this book.
Multiversal (Not)Ikea romp where an elderly customer falls through one of the multidimensional portals created by the store’s complex layout. The two lowest paid employees are sent through to retrieve her amidst the insanity of the store’s alternate universe counterparts.
In between the capitalist bullshit, you have Ava and Jules who are sent off together despite having a rough breakup just a few days ago and are yet to process where they are. I felt this could have been given some more time and not just because I’m a whore for enby queer rep.
On the whole it’s good but perhaps needed more space than a novella to really find its feet.
This was funny and charming, but also handled hard truths and big feelings. A really wonderful (and quick!) read that I would recommend to everyone.
A nice romp through parallel universes with anti corporate overtones and a compelling LGBTQ relationship.
4.5 stars. i went into this sort of blind and i was happily surprised. i need the sequel asap!
Bizar book about multiverses and Ikea stores.
Some queer people and a queer love interest.
Just a fun and entertaining book that even lets you think a bit about stuff ... not too much, but just enough.
"which of those worlds do we exist in right now?"
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.
Finna is a fun and fast-paced (slightly deadly) anti-capitalist adventure through a wormhole in technically-not-Ikea with two former lovers a few days after breaking up.
It’s an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-transphobic, anti-capitalist, thought-provoking romp which strikes just the right balance between explaining stressful stuff and depicting an escape from it. The romantic relationship is over before the story starts, and it helps convey a raw feeling, an uncertainty, because while the reader doesn’t already know all of why it didn’t work out, the shape is familiar. The world-building is really good for such a short book.
I was completely drawn in by the first line of the synopsis. "When an elderly customer at a big box furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension" (AS IS PRONE TO HAPPEN, OBVIOUSLY). Turns out, it is prone to happen in this chain. There is a company policy for what to do. There is even an old training video. Of course the equipment you are supposed to use to rescue the customer is old and potentially broken and who knows what kinds of worlds you are going to encounter. That's why it is policy to send the lowest ranking employees. They are expendable.
Ava and Jules are assigned the task. This is the first time they've spoken since they broke up. Now they have to face people-eating plants, murderous corporate drones, and pirates in their quest to survive the multiverse.
This novella also contains own voices nonbinary representation. …
I was completely drawn in by the first line of the synopsis. "When an elderly customer at a big box furniture store slips through a portal to another dimension" (AS IS PRONE TO HAPPEN, OBVIOUSLY). Turns out, it is prone to happen in this chain. There is a company policy for what to do. There is even an old training video. Of course the equipment you are supposed to use to rescue the customer is old and potentially broken and who knows what kinds of worlds you are going to encounter. That's why it is policy to send the lowest ranking employees. They are expendable.
Ava and Jules are assigned the task. This is the first time they've spoken since they broke up. Now they have to face people-eating plants, murderous corporate drones, and pirates in their quest to survive the multiverse.
This novella also contains own voices nonbinary representation.
This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story
Fun, super fast, funny adventure through "only my second job". I got a good laugh and related to a lot of this.
Super fun, funny, with some scary/creepy bits. I liked the overall hopeful tone, straightforward and accessible.
This is a fun, anti-capitalist, wonderfully queer, light sci-fi adventure novella and I'm all about it. It's like NBC's Superstore meets Grady Hendrix's Horrorstör, but FINNA has its own unique style. You've got wormholes and multiverses, danger and discovery, humor and heart. I would have been thrilled to read a slightly longer book that fleshed out the characters a little bit more, but this shorter format worked great, too. I raced through this book right along with Jules and Ava, and I'm rushing off to read more by Nino Cipri.
