Defekt by Nino Cipri
Defekt is a stand-alone sequel to Nino Cipri's Hugo and Nebula nominated novella from 2020, Finna (which I reviewed here). Finna was great - a story set in an alternate version of Ikea, whose corporate structure involves stores that occasionally feature wormholes to other universes, some of which were wild and crazy as they showed the (often-literal) vampiric nature of capitalism. But what made Finna special was that it featured at its heart two queer exes after a breakup having to work together and to build a relationship without romance between the two of them. It was a great piece of character work and a joy to read, even if it wasn't very long.
Defekt continues the setting of the alternate Ikea (known as LitenVärld) but features a new main character - the supposedly perfect employee Derek who lives for nothing but helping others and more importantly, helping the store. It's not quite as great as Finna, but it's still very good as it tells the story - through magically coming to life furniture, clones, and the occasional wormhole to another world - of a guy having to realize there's nothing wrong with being different and with wanting something for himself, instead of just helping the entity he works for. Once again it's an anti-capitalist story with a fun character arc alongside it, which makes it incredibly easy to finish in a single sitting, even if it doesn't quite match the relationship building of Finna.
Quick Plot Summary: Derek is the perfect employee of LitenVärld, a not quite Ikea Swedish furniture store, which uses some real innovative ways for cutting margins (like acquiring goods for sale from other universes!). Derek always has a happy disposition at work, gets to work early every day, tries to be helpful - sometimes TOO helpful - and even sleeps every night in a trailer in the back of the store's parking lot. And then Derek seems to get sick, with a strange growth on his neck, that seems to be not just bleeding but uttering things out of his control...and for the first time ever he calls out sick.
As a result, Derek finds himself re-assigned to the night shift, given a strange-looking weapon-like device, and tasked to hunt down Defekta, animated furniture that have gotten out of control in the store. But even stranger than it all is that Derek's co-workers on this shift are all other versions of himself, with their own quirks and personalities. Soon these interactions will make Derek realize he isn't that different from the Defekta himself, and he'll have to make the first choice in his own life that is for....himself.
Thoughts: Defekt is not a long novella, but it's a lot of fun as it once again pokes fun at capitalism with LitenVärld - especially through company manuals that are excerpted from in between every chapter in ways that are constantly amusing. But for the second straight novella in this universe, the book is trying to do something more in addition to its anti-capitalist message (the company literally tries designing its own employees to be perfect employees and tries to get around environmental regulations from robbing other worlds).
Instead here we have a story about a guy who has his whole life subsumed his own wants to that of the corporation he works at learning that it's okay to have his own desires. It's okay to say things on his own, and his own differences - and the differences of his other coworkers - are not defects, but what makes him unique and special. And both Derek's story, and the stories of the other versions of him, who are really great, work really well, and make it hard to put this one down. This isn't quite up to the level of Finna, in that its theme is not quite as unique, but it's still really good and well worth your time.
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