Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

[This is a reprint of a previously posted review; it has been posted her for posterity]

A number of people I know and respect had either loved or recced Santa Olivia to me (or both!) but in my typical contrarian style, it took me a while to get around to reading it. And even now, though I enjoyed the book a lot and look forward to reading it again at some point, I feel unsure about what to say about it.

So here are a collection of random thoughts, in no particular order (Spoilery for Santa Olivia).


I had a problem with the book at first, simply because I'd built up a certain expectation of what story I was going to be reading based on the blurb and the story I was actually reading wasn't much like it.

From Publishers Weekly: Departing from epic fantasy (Kushiel's Dart, etc.), Carey sets this powerful near-future tale in Outpost 12, a small town trapped in a buffer zone shielding Texas from pandemic-stricken Mexico. Two half-siblings chafing under General Argyle's military rule make very different plans to beat the status quo. Tom, the son of a soldier, lives at the gym, where he trains in boxing and hopes to win his freedom from the town by defeating the general's boxing champion. Loup, who has inherited her escaped father's oddly engineered genes, joins a group of church wards called the Santitos, a tight gang of vigilantes who masquerade as the local saint, Santa Olivia.

From that description, I was expecting something more Magnificent Seven or Zorro-esque; a variation on a caper-fic, vigilantes who bring down the corrupt overlord.

But that's not the book Carey wrote. And…that's not her fault, for lack of better phrasing. I formed an expectation, but the fact that I formed it and proceeded on certain assumptions was my fault. I interrogated the text from the wrong perspective (*g*). But in doing so, it took me a while to cotton to the idea that the book was not going to go where I thought and it took me a while longer to be able to relax and experience the story Carey actually wanted to tell me.

In terms of actual, real criticism, I actually have very little. I feel like the story should have actually started many pages later than it did. Most of the information covered about Loup's mother Carmen could've been handled through Loup's eyes and Loup's journey; it felt to me like Carey had sat down to write, started a story that she didn't have a plan for and realized many pages in that it wasn't actually about Carmen or Tommy, Loup's brother. The shift in POVs, from Carmen's, to Tommy's and then finally to settle and stabilize on Loup felt clumsy and unnecessary. It also was less interesting reading about Carmen, or even Tommy. The story didn't feel like it had truly started before it got to Loup and that's a pretty long time to settle into your voice.

But. Once it did get there, Loup's story was completely engrossing. I really like and I was really fascinated by the way that, although Loup was incapable of experiencing fear, as we understand it, she was nonetheless a richly emotional character. I think it would have been very easy to make her more robotic; I think that's the common expectation for that kind of character, but instead, she made Loup openly and joyously and honestly emotional in a way that's completely engaging. And though it wasn't the story I was expecting, I found myself entirely satisfied with the story I got.