Monday, February 27, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: VenCo by Cherie Dimaline

 


Full Disclosure: This book was read as an e-ARC Audiobook (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on February 7, 2023 in exchange for a potential review. I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.

Venco is the latest novel from Métis author Cherie Dimaline, known in large part for her award winning YA novel The Marrow Thieves and who also has written adult contemporary fantasy with her book Empire of Wild. Dimaline's works have dealt heavily with the indigenous communities of North America (not just Métis peoples) as they deal with life in the modern world...or oppression in near future ones, and are often harsh and brutal. But that harshness and brutality is to good extent, and her books tackle strong themes effectively and leave you with lasting impressions, especially as to the injustices that are very real around us. I imagined VenCo, a novel advertised as witches fighting against the patriarchy, would similarly hit upon such themes, and with some of the advertised blurbs mentoining it as being full of "adventure" and "funny", I was eager to give my advance copy at try.

Those blurbs turned out to be a bit misleading, as while there are humorous points, VenCo is a serious and often dark book featuring a Métis woman and her grandmother discovering a potential coven of witches and going on a chase for a final seventh wish - and a magical spoon - which could help them somehow dismantle a patriarchy that keeps women and people who don't fit into male stereotypes down. The book has a notably dark antagonist (see below trigger warning) that kind of keep it from ever being funny, but its lead characters are very charming and easy to enjoy and the plot largely works as it does hit upon its main themes. The book also avoids the way too common binary dichotomy of men vs women and makes clear that gender isn't a binary, and that the patriarchy keeps down trans, NB, and other individuals as well, with such characters considered possible parts of the coven as well, which I appreciated. That said, the setting felt very incomplete and the triggering material almost overshadowed this book at times, and didn't quite always feel necessary, which made it hard for me to really love VenCo.

TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual Assault/Rape, in an unconventional sense at least. The antagonist in this book is like the personification of the oppression of Patriarchal Societies, and he has magical powers that include mind-influencing and terrifying, such that even if he never explicitly on page rapes anyone (although he sort of tries at one point), he more or less arouses involuntary sexual responses from those who get in his way (and not in a "he's hot way", but like a "forces a male character to think about women and masterbate type of way" - I may not be describing this right, but I have no interest in going back and rereading that sequence) It's rough to read, and while it fits the themes...it might be a bit much. Also this novel includes homophobia, transphobia, sexism, and more of that ilk.
---------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------
Lucky St. James wishes life could be as simple as it seemed sometimes growing up, when she lived with her Métis mother, who scrounged Toronto for scraps for them to live on and enjoy during her childhood....before her mother died young. Now, Lucky lives with her loving but fading grandmother Stella, and is barely holding on - with an eviction notice just having come to their apartment. There seems little hope...until Lucky finds a metal spoon with the word SALEM and an image of a witch embossed on it in a long hidden tunnel in their building.

The spoon brings Lucky to the attention of VenCo, and specifically a group of five other women who have found similar spoons marking them as one of seven witches in a coven - a coven that together will have the power to break the Patriarchy and restore Women - whether they be cis, trans, or whatever - to their rightful place in society. But a prophecy suggests that Lucky will have to be the one to find the seventh and final witch and her own Spoon, and that they only have days to do it...or else the Coven will be lost forever.

Soon Lucky will find herself and her grandmother traveling through the United States and meeting other women involved in VenCo and Witchery as she attempts to find the last Spoon and Witch before time runs out. But Lucky is not the only one searching, and a powerful immortal witch hunting male, with monstrous powers of his own, is hot on her tail and if he catches her, it could spell the end for Lucky, Stella, and the chances for women everywhere....
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VenCo is the story of a world that is basically our own world - one where the patriarchy has set up systems that oppress women, non-binary peoples, and really anyone who doesn't fit into the stereotypical form of cis men. It's a story about women taking an instance of oppression as part of that patriarchy, a major symbolic one in the Salem Witch Trials, and forming it into their own symbol of resistance in the Salem spoons, and of them using their own witchcraft to slowly find a way to change theh world. And we see this in what little we see of VenCo, led by its trio of Mother, Maiden, and Crone, and in the coven Lucky and Stella wind up joining.

But largely, VenCo is an adventure story of Lucky and Stella on the road trying to find a MacGuffin, the seventh spoon and the witch it belongs to, before the patriarchy's representative, in the monstrous man Jay Christos, can stop her. And that adventure is well done thanks to Lucky and Stella's characters. Lucky is our main protagonist and it's super easy to care for her, given how understandable her position is: a girl who once had a childhood that was at times tough but at times filled with wonder due to the scrappiness of her barely getting by (and kinda homeless) mother who scavenged for things to enjoy, and who taught Lucky how to survive in this world, but now is a young adult herself on the verge of falling apart: she and her grandmother about to be evicted, the boy she is attracted to she can't quite spit it out to (and then he reacts poorly), and her own hope of a writing career seemingly has no chance of any success leading to her taking temp jobs that aren't quite good enough. Her grandmother Stella is warm, but losing her memory and Lucky finds herself burdened by this but unwilling to leave her behind, and so when VenCo comes calling with the possibilities of something better, she jumps....except that jump leads her on an adventure where she has no idea what she's doing and is always on the lookout for potential danger, even when she isn't quite aware of the evil chasing her. And Lucky is kind of original in her problem solving and in how she winds up dealing with the main antagonist in the end, which I really appreciated.

At the same time, VenCo struggles due to a number of factors. First, despite the book's plot summary and implications, the book never explains what VenCo does or how its people are organized, so they just sort of are there, even with the main coven's members all being women its easy to like and care about from brief backstory flashbacks. The book led me to believe we'd be dealing with an organization of women witches, but it's more like an outline of something that the book never quite fills in, making it kind of hard to care...especially when there's little payoff to the frequent interludes with the Mother, Maiden, and Crone. Secondly, and perhaps more o a problem for me, was the main antagonist, whose use of mind controlling magic, sexual mind controlling magic at that, is dark as hell and honestly is kind of a bit much...even if he never quite gets to literal rape on page, what he does is almost the equivalent, and I don't really think that was necessary, even if the final showdown works.

Basically, VenCo feels like a book whose setting and setup was incomplete and kind of skipped, and the antagonist's rape-happy-esque ways make it hard to read the skeleton of what remains, even if the lead protagonists are enjoyable. The result is a book whose themes are well taken and done okay, but isn't really one I'd be super happy to recommend.

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