Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they'll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination. - goodreads.com
This book grabbed my attention when I saw it at my local bookstore the other day, I just had to pick it up. The layout is so unique for a novel, resembling the well-known Ikea catalogs, right down to those items listed on the cover being on said pages inside. The author even makes references back to Ikea and how Orsk is a rip off of Ikea at a much better value. It is listed under 'adult' and 'horror' but I really don't think it fits well under either. It was a very simple easy read. I finished it in less than a day, and horror? No, not at all, more like parody of a haunted store. To be perfectly honest the whole concept as to why the store was haunted was silly, and sometimes hard to follow.
I rated this book more on the lower side of the 5 star scale and gave one star for the look of the book, the creativity that went into the cover, 'coupons' for the store, delivery slips, and floor maps deserve to be noticed. I thought the book was neat, I was excited to start it, and I'm glad I did pick it up. The story itself just wasn't all that great. The author must have worked a lot of retail and hated it because he makes it very well known how terrible retail is [I agree] and how places like Ikea create a maze for customers to get lost in, so they spend more money.
If you are looking for a unique read, something more on the 'horror parody' side of things, I suggest getting horrorstor a look OR just pick it up to see the amazing detail that went into the cover and pages at the beginning of each chapter!
3 out of 5!!
Grady Hendrix does a job. His job is called "writing" which means that he is completely irrelevant and can be killed and turned into food at any time. He is one of the founders of the New York Asian Film Festival, but he is not responsible for the bad parts of it. He is also not Asian. For years, he was a regular film critic for the New York Sun but then it went out of business. He has written for Playboy Magazine, Slate, The Village Voice, the New York Post, Film Comment, and Variety before Variety fired him for writing about Asians. Variety does not like Asians. He writes fiction, also called "lies," and he writes non-fiction, which people sometimes mistakenly pay him for. There is a science fiction book called Occupy Space that he is the author of, and also a fantasy book called Satan Loves You which he wrote as well. Along with his BFF from high school, Katie Crouch, he is the co-author of the YA series, The Magnolia League. With Ryan Dunlavey he was co-authored the Li'l Classix series, which are cartoon degradations of classic literature, and with his wife, and Ryan, he wrote Dirt Candy: A Cookbook, the first graphic novel cookbook in America. His fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, and the anthology, The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination.He is very, very beautiful, but if you ever meet him, please do not let this make you uncomfortable. He does not judge.The New Yorker once ran a short profile of him, and this means that when the time comes and they are lining people up for the Space Arks he will be guaranteed a seat ahead of you. - gradyhendrix.com
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