James Nicoll Reviews

Cherie Dimaline’s 2023 VenCo is a stand-alone contemporary fantasy novel.

Lucky St. James has a crappy job, which pays her just enough to afford the apartment that Lucky shares with her increasingly befuddled grandmother Stella¹. It’s the miracle of modern capitalism! Or it was. Lucky tries not to think about the eviction notice she has just received. It’s too depressing. She and Stella may soon be homeless, as Lucky cannot afford another apartment in over-priced Toronto.

Unbeknownst to Lucky, she has a destiny with a capital D. To put it another way, she is a target with a capital T.

A witches coven is self-selecting itself into being. Once formed, the coven may be able to upend the world’s socioeconomic system. Perhaps capitalistic doom can be averted²! But only if the coven manages to accrete.

Each member of the coven is to be recruited by a previous coven member. The new coven member must then find the next member.

Lucky is the sixth witch. The fifth witch, Freya Monahan, presents herself as a recruitment officer from VenCo, a female-led publishing house based in the US. Freya tells Lucky that she has a great opportunity, to work for VenCo as a writer.

Not only has Lucky always dreamed of being a published writer, the position comes with great perks. Such as a new place to live for Lucky and Stella. Lucky eventually discovers what her new supposed job entails, but the offer is too good to turn down. Now all she need do is find the seventh, final, witch.

There are just two small problems. The first is that each new recruit has less time than the one before to find the next coven member. Freya had six months to find Lucky. Lucky will have seventeen days to find the seventh witch.

The second catch is that Lucky isn’t the only person searching for the new witch. Jay Christos is quite satisfied with the current world order. Jay Christos is determined to ensure that nothing changes. Jay Christos is immortal, gleefully cruel, and inordinately powerful.

~oOo~

Early in the book there’s a reference to Hogwarts. That would not have been my go-to magical school reference in 2025, let alone in a book critical of capitalism. The Hogwarts books are so insistently conservative that they are critical of freeing slaves (Dobby), never mind reforming the economic system. I suppose this shows how deeply embedded that franchise is in the public mind. Sigh.

Also, the choice to mention Hogwarts made me ponder the thematic significance of Jay Christos’ depraved homosexual tendencies in a way the author probably did not intend.

I didn’t care for the book, for reasons that probably boil down to me being the wrong reader for it. Take the idea that the state of the world is entirely dependent on the magical machinations of a small handful of special people. I do see a parallel with real-world oligarchs, but for oligarchs to have the leverage to do what they do, legions of people had to help… or at least follow instructions. The witches seem to be working alone.

Actually, it might be more the idea of magical saviours that bothers me. The universe favours entropy, so a few people being able to break stuff seems reasonable. Creativity and maintenance are what’s hard.

The social and economic history presented in this book seemed simplified. An example: the book blames the mass witch burnings of the 16^th and 17^th centuries on the Catholic Counter-Reformation. That’s misleading. Blame the Protestants as well!

However, such cartoonification of history might have been needed to make the plot work. If the world today is the product of many forces interacting over a long long time, it doesn’t seem plausible that the world can be fixed by seven people confounding one man. Saviour narratives require straightforward contexts.

There was one detail that rang very true to me: near the beginning, the novel notes an early roadblock to Lucky’s dream of being a writer: a teacher reduced Lucky’s mark from an A to an A-. The teacher’s writing career had stalled and he was feeling vindictive. That episode felt drawn from real life.

VenCo is available here (Random House), here (Barnes & Noble), here (Bookshop US), here (Chapters-Indigo), and here (Words Worth Books).

I did not find VenCo at Bookshop UK, although they do stock other Dimaline novels.

1: The apartment also houses Stella’s cat. Lucky is allergic to cats. Lucky really can’t catch a break.

2: USA delenda est.