VEN.CO, sapphic Indigenous fantasy drenched in gynergy to keep you sane this Yule

VEN.CO
CHERIE DIMALINE
William Morrow (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: VenCo, a front corporation for a CoVen (get it?) is a really fun gynergetic fantasy of what it would take to overwhelm the patriarchy and restore women to power.

Do you need something else to get one for this hijacked-by-jesus (who has a sly off-kilter cameo) sacred solstice holiday?

How about this: Lucky, our PoV character, is at a low ebb when we meet her...she's been struggling along, caring for her dementia-ridden paternal grandmother, scraping the money to survive, and now...the capitalist axe comes down, they're losing their home. Relatable, if in a grim way, to most all of us in or after middle age. Plot twist: It's now that Lucky discovers she's a witch, and the coven that's forming needs her...but not in Toronto, in New Orleans. The coven is forming to bring the world that Lucky's been angry with for most of her life, patriarchal racist exploitive horror that it is, to an end. She's got to assist the assembled women...including transfem Freya, explicitly accepted as a woman...in locating and assembling the spoons that'll generate the power they need to accomplish the task.

There are lots of names that don't always have solid characters attached, there is a notable holeyness to the plot, there is a powerful aura of wish fulfillment here. There is also an even-handed treatment of adversarial relationships. There is a demonization of Patriarchy, it's true, but not (to my surprise) of men.

The reason I gave it four stars is that this story was just plain fun to read. I wish it had been a wee tiny tidge tighter of plot. I'm not going to hold it up as a best of my reading year book. But I loved feeling so at home with Lucky, her deeply stressful life, and her middlescent discovery of her powers and her purpose. I thoroughly agree, in 2024, with the need to smash the Patriarchy and all its boosters and adherents. I was deeply gruntled by the transfem Freya simply...being...unremarkably one of the coven.

If you're going to be among the unenlightened, even the benighted, this coming Yule, bring this on your Kindle. You'll have an escape into a much nicer version of the world at hand, and a little spirit boost as the impending events of 2025 loom ever larger.