Read: Santa Olivia, Jacqueline Carey

 

I picked this up at a recent library book sale. YES, I LIKE FANTASY FICTION THAT BORDERS ON YOUNG-ADULT.  I’ve never quite grown out of that, and I don’t know if I will.

So if you like other stuff by Jacqueline Carey, or supernatural stories about low-tech dystopian towns, or werewolves, or boxing, pick up Santa Olivia. Spoilers in the review that follows.

 

                       

             Loup (pronounced ‘Lou’: from the French for werewolf “loup-garou”) is an orphaned girl born to a mutant-werewolf-vagabond father and a sheltered woman from ‘Outpost’, nickname for the small town of Santa Olivia, cordoned off from both the rest of the United States and Mexico. Her older brother is training to become a master fighter. She grows up simulating miracles by ‘the real’ Santa Olivia with a raggedy crowd of children taken in by the facade of a church. She begins training to box herself once her brother is killed, to avenge him and to hopefully escape Santa Olivia. The most interesting thread, though, is her social interaction: romantic and platonic relationships are puzzling for Loup, until she finds Pilar.

 

 

             This book picks up on, and transforms, a lot of tropes and associations. We have the woman as she-wolf, the woman/girl who is dangerous because she is fearless, the strong female as mutant and unnatural, the “butch lesbian”. But we also have the Saint girl metamorphosed into a fierce rule-breaker, the girl who embraces revolt as her way out of a trapped world, the mutant/werewolf that lives in an all too realistic environment.

(art by justine hourdeau)

 

         It provoked some strong thoughts and questions about women and the portrayal of mutation/the supernatural in literature. If you’re looking for an empowering account, this book might be the place to start. In short, I enjoyed this one a lot, and once I get through my other summer reads I mean to pick up the sequel Saints Astray.