Jacqueline Carey: Santa Olivia

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing (May 29, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 044619817X 

There is no pity in Santa Olivia. And no escape. In this isolated military buffer zone between Mexico and the U.S., the citizens of Santa Olivia are virtually powerless. Then an unlikely heroine is born. She is the daughter of a man genetically manipulated by the government to be a weapon. A "Wolf-Man," he was engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, stamina, and senses, as well as a total lack of fear. Named for her vanished father, Loup Garron has inherited his gifts. 
  Frustrated by the injustices visited upon her friends and neighbors by the military occupiers, Loup is determined to avenge her community. Aided by a handful of her fellow orphans, Loup takes on the guise of their patron saint, Santa Olivia, and sets out to deliver vigilante justice - aware that if she is caught, she could lose her freedom...and possibly her life


  When I first picked up Carey's Santa Olivia, I knew it was going to be different from her Terre D'Ange series, both from the obviously different universes in which the characters lived and the language styles. I was also expecting superhero-type fantasy novel, almost a Frank Miller graphic novel in book form. However, I was sorely mistaken. The novel starts instead by introducing the main character's parents and brother, and how she came into the world.
  Loup suffers tragedy after tragedy, but she has a number of friends around her that help her cope. No matter how many friends she has, however, there's always something a little...off about Loup. Her father was a sort of super-soldier bred in Haiti and she has inherited his strange genes. She is ridiculously strong and fast, can't cry, and doesn't feel fear. And her body feels odd to other human beings, except those chosen few who can accept the genetically enhanced for what they are.
  Loup, her friends, and the rest of her fellow townspeople, are trapped in Santa Olivia, a town which the world has forgotten exists. There's a little mystery there, probably to be solved in future novels, about what really happened on the border with Mexico and why these people are effectively imprisoned in their own home. There is one chance to escape and Loup is going to take that chance, even if it means exposing herself - and that chance is boxing. That was another element that I didn't see coming, either. The importance of boxing in this novel is intense. The novel is really a novel about boxing, and the vigilante superhero only shows up in some childhood pranks. The way she comes to boxing is beautifully tragic, and actually made me tear up a little.
  The writing wasn't stupendous, but it was definitely not bad. As I said, this book was almost unrecognizable as a novel of Jacqueline Carey if you had read her Terre D'Ange work. It was a lot more blunt, but it suited the tone of the story. While unexpected, Santa Olivia was a pretty good read and made you want to continue reading, although it certainly wasn't up to par with her other, more involved works.
  Overall: A-