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.

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Cherie Dimaline’s 2023 Funeral Songs for Dying Girls is a stand-alone modern fantasy.

Sixteen-year-old Winifred ​“Win” Blight lives with her taciturn father in the Winterson Cemetery¹, where her father operates the crematorium. While living in a house² on cemetery grounds has its drawbacks — fellow students (the jerks) call Win ​“Wednesday Addams³” — Win has lived there her whole life and it’s all she knows. News that declining business may force the crematorium to shut down is unwelcome news, as the Blight home is a free perk of graveyard employment.

Win has one card to play: the cemetery ghost.

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Cherie Dimaline’s 2017 The Marrow Thieves is a near-future science fiction novel.

The government of Canada’s Department of Oneirology has reopened the residential schools, this time as medical processing centres. First Nations people go in. Dreams and corpses come out. All that’s needed is suitable donors, people like Frenchy and his Anishnaabe kin.

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