I don’t like it when recommendations and blurbs lie to me, or are misleading. I also don’t especially enjoy it when a story is trying so hard to make some kind of meaningful point that it repeatedly directly tells you it’s trying to make said point. Finna has so much going for it: basically a pair of queer employees, both of whom have emotional or neuro-divergent struggles, of a store that sounds suspiciously like IKEA, who very recently broke up, end up going on an inter-dimensional trip to rescue a lost customer using a tracking device, the titular FINNA. There’s an awful lot here: low wage work, queer relationships, mental health, neuro-divergence, and a little bit on race, all blended into a speculative fiction novella. It’s also a great premise; who hasn’t gone into a large store that’s organized as a series of sections or rooms and wondered about the possibilities of a portal sci-fi/fantasy adventure?
The biggest problem for me is the cover blurb “A magical anti-capitalist adventure” which is also somehow used in the early marketing (I don’t remember exactly). How is this present you might wonder? A few random blaming of problems at work on “It’s just capitalism!” That’s it. An unfeeling corporate overlord of some sort and a few supposedly snarky remarks is not enough to be anti-capitalist commentary. It’s just not, especially when the problems seem to be located in a single manager and a corporate training video. It also doesn’t really work when the zombie or vampire dimensional version of the same store has to be infiltrated or escaped from, because there’s not enough detail about that version of the store. Really all this “anti-capitalism” is is the recognition that lower level employees at lower wage jobs are not often treated very well or humanized, and while that can be related to capitalism, it’s neither exclusive to it, nor is this the real focus of interest in the story. That honor goes to the relationship or possibly lack thereof between Ava (the main perspective of the story) and Jules. Besides being very recently ex-partners in the romantic sense and trying to work through all the feelings that go with that, both of them have an internal or personal issue that affected the relationship. These things are what drive the characters and the story.
There’s so little about the approximately 3 dimensions visited that what could have been fascinating world-building is sorely neglected. This is a character study, which would be fine except that’s not the story is presented; the back cover blurb directly notes that the story “explores queer relationships {yes it does} and queer feelings {yes, this too}, capitalism and accountability {nope, not really}, labor and love {kinda but too vague to say for sure, especially since isn’t this really already covered?}, all with a bouncing sense of humor {kinda but not really}, and a commitment to the strange {again, kinda but not enough to really judge}”. Not only is only some of that really a focal presence, but having to say so this directly is trying too hard, especially since there are 3 more blurbs from other people who mention these things in a better way; and let’s not forget that previously mentioned bit from the front cover. Overall, an interesting brief read, but nowhere near what it’s sold to be.
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