FINNA by Nino Cipri

FINNA by Nino Cipri is an amusing novella set in a thinly veiled Ikea store in the US. It features wormholes to parallel universes, and two employees who recently broke up and have not yet worked through the awkward post-breakup period.

When an elderly customer at a big box furniture store 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 our two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.

Can friendship blossom from the ashes of a relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.

I really enjoyed FINNA. As is my habit, I had forgotten what it was about (aside from thinking that it was vaguely Scandinavian which it was, emphasis on the vaguely). The opening of the book sets the scene with a focus on the protagonist’s general misery from her retail job and more specific misery from her recent breakup. It gave me just enough time to wonder what the speculative fiction element was going to be before introducing the wormholes. Then it turned into a fun and slightly absurd adventure story as Ava and Jules are forced to go on a rescue mission.

Since this is a relatively short read, I'm not sure there's very much more I can say without skirting spoilers, so I will leave you with one final opinion. I really liked that this wasn't a romance story. Ava and Jules were a couple, now they're not and the story arc is absolutely not about them getting back together. I'm not sure I've come across this as a central focus of a spec fic book before. I highly approve of the depiction of healthy non-romantic relationships in books.

I highly recommend FINNA if you enjoy universe hopping and/or slightly absurd science fiction. Or if you hate Ikea (personally, I don't get the Ikea hate, but whatever). I will certainly be keeping an eye on other books and stories I come across by Cipri.

4.5 / 5 stars

First published: February 2020, Tor.com (coming 25/2)
Series: I don't think so
Format read: eARC
Source: Publisher via NetGalley

Reading stories 11 to 15

Post title brought to you by apparently I am counting stories read this year (I mean, automatically, because spreadsheet). And because I am definitely going to run out of post titles if I don't standardise them somehow.

A mildly amusing anecdote about the first story in this batch: for reasons I'm still unclear on, the version of the story that appeared in Pocket was only the last section of story. The fact that I still thought it was a pretty good read without the first two thirds or so of the text is testament to the author's writing. But of course, when I realised the mistake (basically, when I was logging it in the spreadsheet) and did read the start of the story, I found it an even better read that delved more deeply into the issues that previously only seemed touched upon. Shocking, I know. I will have to be vigilant if I get to more stories from the same magazine.

On another note, I just subscribed to Uncanny since I've been reading a lot of their stories. Will be interesting to see how having ePubs of the whole magazine rather than saving isolated stories affects my reading experience.

Stories 11 to 15:

A Complex Filament of Light by S Qiouyi Lu — A story set in Antarctica about a person dealing with difficult feelings after a loss. Isolation, auroras and mental health. Source: http://www.anathemamag.com/a-complex-filament-of-light

Landmark by Cassandra Khaw — Lovers separated by astronomical distances try to stay in touch with technology. The extreme long-distance relationship. Dour. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/khaw_12_17/

An Account of the Sky Whales by A Que — A lovely story about flying space whales, the boyfriend of a whale researcher making the journey to collect her ashes, poachers. A meaty world, well-developed in this novelette. Source: http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/audio_06_17d/

Relentless Adaptations by Tansy Rayner Roberts — A story about a sleep-deprived new mother in a world where all fiction has been reduced to classics + gimmicks (zombies, vampires, etc). Also an apocalypse, but she’s too tired to pay much attention to that. Very amusing. Source: Sprawl edited by Alisa Krasnostein

It Happened To Me: I Melded My Consciousness With the Giant Alien Mushroom Floating Above Chicago by Nino Cipri — A vaguely amusing story. Not bad, but not interesting enough to get away with not being funny at this short form. Source: https://firesidefiction.com/it-happened-to-me-i-melded-my-consciousness-wtih-the-giant-alien-mushroom-floating-above-chicago