Santa Olivia

Santa Olivia
Jacqueline Carey
Grand Central Publishing
May 2009

Jacqueline Carey has quickly become one of my favorite, fantasy authors, and there is a reason for that. Carey, best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series of books has the uncanny ability to take our world and twist it, creating a fabulous new world full of things that are eerily similar to what we know, but strange, new, and different. Her talent lies not in convincing you that this other world is living and breathing and exists, but in making you care so deeply about it because in reality this world could be what your own was if things were only slightly different. There is some sort of secret delight in seeing how our world gets turned at right angles into the stories that Carey produces, and what sort of threads are woven together into the tapestry of some new, unique re-imagining of familiar stories.

Carey’s latest work, Santa Olivia, is a departure from her world of Terre D’Ange, and is instead a modern book, an urban fantasy. Before I received the book in the mail, I dubbed it Carey’s X-files book, after my much beloved show, and within a few pages you know why. The story seems nearly ripped from the headlines of the past few months, the world is plagued by a pandemic that streams across the border between the US and Mexico, and the town of Santa Olivia, Texas is caught in the middle. Weakened by illness, and caught in a mysterious conflict between the US and a ghostlike Mexican general named El Segundo, Santa Olivia is soon cut off from the world, it’s people informed that they are no longer citizens, they are non-entities, lorded over by the US Army who establish a base nearby and rename the town as Outpost. A town with no name, with no country, with no hope, for years the citizens of Outpost eek out an existence under the watchful eyes of the local general, barely piecing together the days with no hope of relief, their one comfort taken in the boxing matches that are the passion of the soldiers and the townspeople alike.

Loup Garron is born into this environment, years after Outpost was taken over and freedom was just a memory. Her lonely mother happened upon her father, a deserter from the Army, a genetically modified experiment on his way to Mexico to join the others of his kind. Their brief and passionate union created a child that no one thought could exist, a girl with all of the powers of her strange, inhuman father. Sadly, before her birth, her father was forced to leave to join his own kind, leaving Loup, (a name her father requested due to her mother’s belief that he was a sort of werewolf). Raised by her loving but overworked mother and her doting and over-protective brother, Loup is very different from the other children of Outpost. Stronger, faster, and more agile than any child of her age should be, Loup also knows no fear. Incapable of feeling that emotion, Loup is forced to learn and understand the social cues and consequences of what having no fear means, and is schooled by her brother to always be careful, to never show off her powers, and to always be mindful of just what her father was. If the Army overseeing Outpost ever got wind of Loup, she could easily be taken and tested on by them, never to be seen by her family again.

Outpost is a hard town, and life there is harsh and unforgiving. Though Loup can’t feel fear, she can feel hurt, injustice, and anger, and like many of the other children her age she chafes at the restrictions of the town, of the Army who controls them, of the two warring families who take advantage of Outpost’s unique situation, and at the fact that the people of Outpost are never, ever able to leave and see the greater world. Their existence has been eradicated and denied, and their movements are carefully monitored. As Loup and her friends age they begin to yearn to do something, anything to give hope to the mindless existence they all live in. And they realize they have hit upon it with Loup’s strange and unique gifts. Taking the persona of the patron saint of the town that had once been Santa Olivia, Loup begins a mission to right the perceived wrongs of Outpost, and to help her people find the faith to persevere despite the oppression. Knowing her quest might end with the very thing her brother Tommy feared the most, Loup decides to make a statement and to become the one thing her community has never had…a hero.

Compared to the 600+ brick monstrosities that are Carey’s normal MO for her Kushiel books, Santa Olivia is a smaller, much more compact read, lacking the epic scope of Carey’s fantasy books. One of my normal complaints about Carey’s work is that it is long and drawn out, overly pedantic, with scenes and side stories I feel are useless in the face of the bigger story. But Santa Olivia suffers from none of these drawbacks. Carey keeps a tight story for a change, leading you easily from before Loup’s childhood through the entire story of her growth and journey into adulthood without anything unnecessary and cluttered. She leads us from point A to B in the most efficient of storytelling ways. Perhaps because her world is so limited, specifically to Outpost, this aided her in keeping the story focused on where it should be, on Loup and her friends, rather than adventures in strange lands far away.

Though it lacks the wide sweep of adventure, it makes up for it in a tight story revolving a close-knit circle of characters, in a situation that could come straight out of a AP newswire today. The idea of a pandemic from Mexico effecting the world, the US over reacting to the threat by overstepping personal and Constitutional rights for the idea of the “greater good”, to the point that they create great evil…this is what we are living and breathing everyday in this country. And Carey takes these ideas and creates a scenario that says, “what if this happened”. It isn’t uncomfortable, and in no way does it stand there pointing fingers. That isn’t what this book is about. But it deftly handles the sensitive subjects without prejudice, with understanding. While we want to hate those who oppress the people of Outpost, we also recognize that they are men doing a distasteful job because someone else made a distasteful decision, and while they aren’t happy about it, they are doing it. The situation is so very complicated, but it is also very real, even in terms our own world.

Carey as an author has a reoccurring theme through her books, and that is that is that people can rise to great things because of their force of will, not because of anything particularly special about them. Even if there is something special that they possess, it is less that specialness and more of what is in their spirit and heart. In essence Carey is writing about a ‘werewolf’ character, a superhero with inhuman strength, never once do you ever see Loup as fantastical or larger than life. She is a girl who is different, yes, but in many ways Loup has the same sense of the world and herself that her peers, the Santitos have. She is a pragmatic, no-nonsense child of a troubled town, and in that you realize that Carey has turned the traditional story on its head. Rather than being from another planet or directly part of the human experiments herself, Loup is a girl who is as much shaped by where she was born and the community she was at as any strange powers or cataclysmic events. Loup as a heroine is one of them, one of the people of Outpost, and thus is one of us as well. Her strangeness almost becomes an afterthought in the journey she must face and the destiny she creates for herself as a symbol to her people.

Outpost is a hardscrabble town; much of what had been civilization at one point in time has given way there to basic necessity and sheer survival. And out of this comes an unlikely cast of characters within the book who might come off as somewhat shady or distasteful in another light, but in the hard luck work of Outpost and around Loup herself they find better qualities. The priest of the town who isn’t really a priest, but takes on the mantel of one to try and do some good in the town, aided by the nun who isn’t a nun either. The boxing coach who is paid by the General to train local boys to box against the Army’s champs is a man who can come and go as he pleases, but chooses to side with Loup when he realizes just how little hope the Army is willing to give to anyone, including himself. The promising prizefighter, son of one of the local powerful families, who uses his station to get what he wants in the tired town, but yearns to be free in the greater world. He eventually comes to love Loup as a friend and kid sister, aiding her in her quest. The world has forgotten about these people and cares little for their little lives, but Carey makes you love them, even though by no means are these people perfect. They are rough, tough, leathery people, worn by the injustice done to them, but they yearn for something better, to be something better and do something better, and through that we come to enjoy them as much as we care for Loup.

Her description of Outpost, the dry and parched desert town, with ghosts of memories of a world that has long past the town by is particularly poignant and poetic. Nothing in the town is new if it doesn’t come from the Army, and few have ever ridden in cars, let alone gotten their hands on a working one. Besides, where would they go? Clothing is patched and frayed, old equipment is used and reused using technology years out of date by the rest of the world’s standards. All communication with the outside is cut off, and for the people of Outpost they don’t remember a world before, a wonderful world that they let slip away as the Army descended. These ghosts of there past act as painful reminders of just what they have given up, and the oppression they feel everyday at their lost lives. It wonderfully creates the atmosphere dying for someone or some thing to give them hope that there can be something better someday, some hope of a life beyond their dusty town. Her setting is perfect for the story she is telling, and while it lacks the polish of graceful and gracious Terre D’Ange, it is no less familiar or powerful.

This is a very different book from the Kushiel series, and Loup is no Phedre no Delauney. Where Phedre is a beautiful and graceful woman, full of elegance and manners, Loup is a child raised on the streets of a ragged town. Liberal use of the swear words, especially the F-bomb is common amongst all of the characters, reminding us that this is a book happening more in our world than in Terre D’Ange. However, if Carey gave up her graceful touch on Loup’s language, she didn’t lose it on Loup’s heart. Loup’s touching romance with her fellow Santito, Pilar, is handled not only tactfully but as a matter-of-fact, with the occasional lewd references, mostly in jest, but with none of the recrimination that one would expect in many corners of Texas today. It is almost indicative of where Outpost exists. They could care less who you sleep with. Perhaps it is merely a result of Loup’s utter lack of fearlessness about the matter. It lacks the uncomfortable that such a relationship would have in perhaps another story or with another author and becomes an afterthought in the full fleshing out of the tale.

Overall for Carey’s first, non-straight-up-fantasy novel, I believe Santa Olivia is a roaring success. Poignant, sweet, thrilling, and heroic, you find yourself at the end wondering if this will be the start of a whole new chapter for both Loup and Carey, with her ‘werewolf’ girl out to save the world. We don’t know, but I certainly hope that it is.

Rate this wormy book: I rate this a MONSTER read for anyone who loves Carey’s work. It is engaging and a fast read compared to her others books, with a character that is just as engaging as Phedre no Delauney, but who is at the same time VERY different. At the end you are cheering for your girl, and hoping that she makes reappearance again for more.