Kadomi reviewed Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey
Review of 'Santa Olivia' on 'Goodreads'
5 stars
I'm a bit surprised with how much I actually loved this book. Started slowly for me, and then just grabbed my heart and yanked me along.
The setting is a formerly Texan town called Santa Olivia, now just known as Outpost, sitting in a no-man's land zone between the US and Mexico, right north of a wall... If that's not fucking eerie nowadays, then I don't know what is. A bit too close to home for a book that was published in 2009. A pandemic has wiped out much life in the land and led to the military taking over. The only entertainment in town aside from bars for soldiers is a regularly hosted boxing match. If someone ever beats a boxer from the military, the winner stands to earn tickets to move north into the USA, away from poverty and gang wars. But of course no one has ever …
I'm a bit surprised with how much I actually loved this book. Started slowly for me, and then just grabbed my heart and yanked me along.
The setting is a formerly Texan town called Santa Olivia, now just known as Outpost, sitting in a no-man's land zone between the US and Mexico, right north of a wall... If that's not fucking eerie nowadays, then I don't know what is. A bit too close to home for a book that was published in 2009. A pandemic has wiped out much life in the land and led to the military taking over. The only entertainment in town aside from bars for soldiers is a regularly hosted boxing match. If someone ever beats a boxer from the military, the winner stands to earn tickets to move north into the USA, away from poverty and gang wars. But of course no one has ever won.
In this small town that's mostly a border outpost for the military we meet Carmen Garron, a waitress at a diner, who first falls in love with a military boxer and has his kid, and then a couple years later meets a stranger who turns out to be genetically modified, sort of werewolf guy. He has to run, but not before impregnating Carmen with the actual protagonist of the story: Loup, named for loup-garou, the French term for werewolf.
In ever rising tension with the military, Loup grows into the role of Santa Olivia, defender of the people from the outpost, vigilante and beacon of hope for the people.
I don't know, the book just pushed all my buttons. It's well-written because Ms. Carey really knows how to write. It has an interesting cast of young characters in the form of the Santitos, the church orphans that Loup grows up with. A character that seemed set up to be a villain, Miguel, turned out to have a lot more depth than I thought he would have. The whole setting of boxing matches strongly reminded me of Rocky. And for me the cherry on top of that sundae was the lesbian romance Loup gets to experience. It was the right mix of sweet and sexy for me. [spoiler]I was extremely happy that Loup and Pilar got their happy end, because lesbians in fiction are often only known for early deaths, not happy endings.[/spoiler]
All in all, I truly loved it, but don't think it's for everyone. The world of Santa Olivia is dark and grimy and explicit (but not too much so). If you come to the book after reading the rich and lush world of Jacqueline Carey's Phèdre books, you might be disappointed. I totally wasn't.