It's been a long time since I read a work of genre fiction. This is not because I think it's inferior in any way; I've just been in the mood for novels and story collections that are more realistic or personal. However, while browsing the local bookstore last week, I happened upon this book and fell in love with the cover, which is a pitch-perfect imitation of an IKEA catalog, complete with the references to furniture that can be found within, but with a beautifully executed twist. I flipped through the first few pages, which include a fake "showroom map" and furniture delivery order form, and knew that I needed to own this book. I bought and started it on that day, putting aside a Murakami novel temporarily while I explored the world of ORSK. 
 This is, in the end, just a haunted house story. There is a cast of characters, they explore a building in which strange things have been happening, and face a series of horrific circumstances within. However, the haunted house in the story is the aforementioned ORSK, a blatant ripoff of IKEA, and the book gets a surprising amount of mileage out of this unconventional setting. 
 I love IKEA, and have since I was a child, when I explored the beautifully furnished fake living rooms and sat on countless varieties of chairs, mattresses, and couches scattered throughout the upper level of the store. When I came to college, I bought my furniture from IKEA. When I moved into my apartment, I bought some more furniture. Heck, I've even visited IKEA when I didn't really have any furniture to buy, solely to eat some meatballs and lounge around. 
 Horrorstor takes the manufactured comfort of IKEA and turns it on its head, emphasizing its uncomfortable sprawl, the shallow nature of its stores and products, and its cold, calculating psychology in an attempt to make it a plausible backdrop for some horrific scenes. This transformation works because Hendrix consistently sweats the details. ORSK really is a carbon copy of IKEA, complete with foreign-sounding product names and cheap, flat-packed furniture, and the book is replete with winks and nods, some more subtle than others, to IKEA and its various quirks. As an IKEA connoisseur of sorts, I really enjoyed all of these references and the humorous, yet sometimes unsettling, ways in which they are depicted. Furthermore, I liked the way the book deals with the horror inherent in being in a place that is currently completely empty but is usually packed with people, particularly in the first half, especially since this is one of my biggest fears. 
 The book takes a turn in its second half, diving headlong into various horror story tropes and actually turning ORSK into a haunted house, using one of the oldest tricks in the book. I was disappointed in this transition, as I wanted Hendrix to bring on the actual haunting in a less hackneyed way. However, even this section of the book has its charms. The lampooning of IKEA continues, and the ways in which Hendrix plays up its "haunting" are fun to read. Furthermore, the actual tribulations undergone by the characters, while nothing special, are written well and are even sometimes relatable(!). 
 But I think it's fair to say that there's nothing particularly interesting or innovative about the horror aspects of the story. The characters are your standard stereotypes, many of whom are disappointingly not discussed in much depth, and the things that happen are somewhat run-of-the-mill, as far as horror stories go. Some of what happened to the characters was a bit too much at times for squeamish me, though it's not worse than something one might find in, say, a Stephen King novel. However, even with this rather generic content, the setting elevates the story and gives it a fun, fresh feeling that made me disappointed the story was so short. 
 This is the kind of horror novel that would work well as a movie, given its evocative setting and nonstop action, as well as its (disappointingly) short length. I do wish the book was scarier (though, to be fair, this is a complaint I have with basically all horror novels), but it is plenty scary, disturbing, and unsettling, and I can also appreciate that some of what it is lacking in horror it makes up for in its comedy. Basically: this is a very fun novel. While the content isn't as great as the cover and the assorted non-textual materials scattered throughout, that's less a criticism of the text than high praise for those graphical elements, which are uniformly well done. I don't know if I can say anything like "I'll never look at IKEA the same way again," but I will say that I'll think of this novel every time I go there. 
 I'm also slightly scared of wardrobes now.