Two half-siblings chafing under General Argyle’s military rule make very different plans to beat the status quo. Praise: “Departing from epic fantasy, Carey sets this powerful near-future tale in Outpost 12, a small town trapped in a buffer zone shielding Texas from pandemic-stricken Mexico. It explores serious themes in its own deceptively unserious way, and it also features cute girls kissing in the rain.

And like the reincarnation of their patron saint, she will bring hope to all of Santa Olivia.Īuthor’s Description: A pandemic bringing out authoritarian, isolationist tendencies in the USA, resulting in the construction of a wall along a DMZ at the US/Mexico border… who could have imagined such a thing back in the aughts? I consider this book a graphic novel in prose form. Eventually, the orphans find an outlet for their frustrations: They form a vigilante group in which Loup Garron, costumed as their patron saint, Santa Olivia, uses her abilities to avenge the town.Īware that she could lose her freedom, and possibly her life, Loup is determined to fight to redress the wrongs her community has suffered. Loup, named for and sharing her father’s qualities, is marked as an outsider.Īfter her mother dies, Loup goes to live among the misfit orphans at the parish church, where they seethe from the injustices visited upon the locals by the soldiers.

A fugitive “Wolf-Man” who had a love affair with a local woman, Loup’s father was one of a group of men genetically engineered by the US government to have superhuman strength, speed, sensory capability, stamina, and a total lack of fear. Loup Garron was born and raised in Santa Olivia, a forgotten town next to a US military base inside a DMZ buffer zone between Texas and Mexico. Lushly written with rich and vivid characters, Santa Olivia is Jacqueline Carey’s take on comic book superheroes and the classic werewolf myth.

Santa olivia book