Review:
This takes place at around the same time as Cipri's first LitenVärld (knockoff IKEA) work, Finna, and features a cameo appearance of one of that work's characters, but I think it could be read and enjoyed on its own.
Derek is a model LitenVärld employee, always striving to support the store and its goals. Right from the moment he wakes up in his converted shipping container home behind the store to the moment he leaves work, he lives and breathes his job. It kind of creeps his fellow employees out. His supervisor encourages him to stop trying to make friends and just focus on his work, but he can't help but feel a little lonely.
Then Derek starts to feel a little...off. It begins with a sore throat. When it progresses to coughing up blood and gristle, a coworker encourages him to take his first sick day ever. He wasn't even aware that he could do that. Unfortunately, this then results in upper management questioning Derek's loyalty to the store and assigning him to a special nighttime inventory shift. Meeting his new coworkers is a shock, to put it mildly.
I wasn't really wild about Finna, but I enjoyed the LitenVärld world just enough to be willing to give it another try. I'm glad I did, because Defekt worked a lot better for me than Finna did.
The defekta (semi-sentient furniture and household accessories) were a lot of fun. I also enjoyed the occasional pokes at big box stores and retail work. I still have not been inside an actual IKEA, but I continue to enjoy fictional knockoff IKEAs as settings for books.
I generally liked Derek's interactions with his new coworkers, although I wish that the author had left out the slightly flirty moments with Darkness, which I found uncomfortably incestuous.
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