Kiss of the Fur Queen wretches the soul presenting a brutal and startling cultural contrast between northern Canadian Cree and white urban cultures. At first, the book presents a rich descriptive, mythical portrait of common Cree belief systems and general worldview regarding life and death, lifestyle and family.There is a sense of community, resilience and an attunement/respect for the forces and cycles of nature which elicit both curiosity and a sense of warmness. Any sense of comfort or rightness quickly seeps away as Champion's experiences in the urban residential school are shared both vividly and viscerally. Painful and brutal, the author affords a lens through which the reader is granted a glimpse of a struggling spirit dealing with unimagined oppression, callousness and disregard. This hegemonic struggle persists throughout the novel–through the deconstruction, reconstruction, rejection and personal meaning making demonstrated by the author through the experiences of the two brothers. –June Kaminski