Book Review: Defekt (LitenVerse #2) by Nino Cipri

Title: Defekt

Author: Nino Cipri

Series: LitenVerse (#2)

Genre: Science Fiction Novella

Number of Pages: 170

Rating: A-

Recommended?: Yes

Okay, this might be the only book about a minimum wage employee struggling to protect sentient furniture while having some serious sexual tension with his non-binary duplicate you ever read, and if that isn’t enough to get you interested in reading Defekt I don’t know what will. Even though I was hoping the sequel of Finna would bring us up to date on what happened to Ava and Jules, the protagonist of Defekt ended up charming me with his well-intentioned social awkwardness and obsession with rule-following.

Derek is the co-worker of Ava and Jules and the character who gets sick in the first book and unintentionally brings all of the major events into motion. I often wondered if Derek was on the autism spectrum or maybe had Asperger’s, but regardless he’s an unusual guy. He works at the soul-sucking corporate IKEA clone LindenVarld and is completely married to his job. He is the only person there who whole-heartedly loves his job and his co-workers hate him.

Derek loves routine and problem-solving but when he commits the unspeakable crime of taking a sick day, he’s sent to do a night shift and runs into a bunch of Derek clones, including a teenage Derek and a female Derek. Their job is to eliminate the LitenVarld products that become sentient and go rogue, but Derek soon realizes there’s more to this group than meets the eye.

If you thought Finna was strange, well, this book was even stranger but in a totally awesome way. I love this author’s imagination and I could just keep on reading books set in this universe. You can also read this as a standalone even though I highly recommend that people interested in these books go ahead and read both. Derek was an appealing protagonist and I loved this novella’s deadpan sense of humor and sharp satire. I really enjoyed both books and I recommend them whole-heartedly.

Advertisement