Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Protagonist archetypes
Synopsis
Derek is LitenVärld's most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn't need time off. To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team — four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?
Tags
Is Defekt appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 16 and up.
This darkly comic sci-fi novella contains moderately disturbing body horror elements (mutant furniture, creatures with pincers), workplace exploitation themes, and existential questions about identity and humanity suitable for older teens and adults.
What to know going in
This book has moderate violence, no sexual content, and mild language. Content notes include body horror, deception, and manipulation (see the full list above).
Who'll love this
Older teens will enjoy this darkly funny story about a worker who discovers unsettling truths about himself and his identical coworkers at a nightmarish IKEA-like store.