SANTA OLIVIA and SAINTS ASTRAY by Jacqueline Carey

One of the reasons I’ve always loved science-fiction is that it uses imagination to try and pierce the veil of the future and hypothesise about what new technology we may have discovered and how our descendants may live. Speculative fiction does the same thing insomuch as it re-imagines what today’s world may look like should even one or two things be different from our past. So to SANTA OLIVIA and its sequel SAINTS ASTRAY, speculative fiction which I picked up recently to read again after many years (the first book was published in 2009), remembering some similarities in them with the events of today, and wondering whether there were any truths to be learnt from them.

Similarities to the reality of today are glaringly obvious: a flu pandemic has wiped out a huge swathe of the global population. The USA, fearing an invasion from Mexico and the poorer countries to the South, has subsequently built a massive wall across Texas and its southern states to keep them out. In the process the USA has created a climate of fear and division within its own country, with its citizens suspicious of the outside world and its military in total control of this new continental border.

Trapped in the No-Man’s Land created by the wall are a number of small towns, whose inhabitants have been arbitrarily stripped of citizenship and their towns designated as Outposts – R&R facilities designed to serve the local US military bases. Into this no-escape, no-hope limbo Loup Garron is born. The unintended offspring of a love affair between a local barmaid and a mysterious deserter, Loup grows up to discover that, like her father, she doesn’t feel fear. Furthermore, she can move unnaturally fast, is unnaturally strong (as well as unnaturally heavy) and has heightened senses and stamina. In short, she has inherited the mutations of her genetically-engineered ‘super-soldier’ father. Driven by her strong sense of justice and supported by the motley crew of orphans with whom she grew up, Loup takes on the guise of the town’s patron saint, Santa Olivia, to redress some of the injustices done to the townsfolk. But keeping a meta-human with a heart incognito is not easy, and when family tragedy strikes Loup takes justice into her own hands in a unique and surprising way. The story unfolds from there, beautifully told, with engaging and believable characters, in a world that is all too easy to imagine. The author Jacqueline Carey is a master at creating interesting scenarios and populating them with the sort of believable detail that makes for an entertaining story that you can devour in one sitting.

But if you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to read the books yourself. The interesting thing here to me is the plausibility of so much of the background. Quite apart from those parts which have come to pass: global ‘flu’ pandemic; talk of a wall being built between Mexico and the USA, there are so many other ring uncomfortably true.  The arbitrary disenfranchisement of citizens is one. In reality, the right to a nationality is considered a fundamental human right by the United Nations, but nevertheless globally there are currently estimated to be up to 10 million stateless people.  Hearing recent discussions about removing nationality as a result of wrongdoing or threat toward the nation of birth – for example religious extremism driving converts abroad to be radicalised and encouraged to terrorism – begs the question of whether this the beginning of the slippery slope towards the state deciding who is desirable (with attendant rights and protections) and who is inconvenient (such as the inhabitants of Santa Olivia).

And what about genetically-engineered humans? It is not a big leap to imagine that they are not far over the horizon in terms of scientific viability, regardless of the morality of such a thing. What rights would they have? Are they, as the military in the story would argue, merely property?  Is their DNA their own or owned by the governments who have created them? What of their offspring – would they be property too? How would ‘natural’ humans react to people who are just a bit too different to be natural? With fear? With fascination? Humanity and its meaning is one of the more interesting threads running through this book and its sequel, and Carey creates more than plausible scenarios for how others might react to someone like Loup – from adoration and intense attraction to ‘weird’, from those who would use or manipulate her abilities to those who would idolise her.   

Then there’s the description of what the USA looks like in this speculative world. Carey, American herself, does not pull any punches about the labyrinthine and unequal systems of justice and government that this America operates under - and which strike very close to home in terms of the current US political system. And her assumptions about how the military might run the Outposts, or indeed about how they have managed to maintain such a huge military presence over a course of a generation, are described very plausibly. It is also interesting that Carey exposes the existence and wrongdoing towards the disenfranchised citizens of Outposts in her books as much through the many thousands of frontline soldiers who are willing to testify on their behalf, as through the workings of the US justice system with its financially-motivated lobbying and behind-the-scene manipulations.

There’s also the matter of how the USA may be perceived by the rest of the world. In Carey’s reality the USA is portrayed as suspicious, provincial and lacking authority on the global stage. It’s a far cry from their global dominance over the last 75 years in the real world. And yet it rings truer and truer as we watch the US political system becoming ever more polarised and intolerant, as social structures are pared back further and further in favour of an elite few or those corporations (especially the industrial military complex) who have the money and influence to lobby for their own ends. This century has also seen the USA come up against China, the first economic and political opponent since the Second World War that has the size and influence to challenge it dominance on the world stage, and which provides an alternative to the democratic capitalist model espoused by the West. And now, watching how the world deals with the Covid-19 pandemic, one can’t help wondering whether this outbreak will be the last straw in breaking the global primacy of capitalism upon which the US has based its fortunes. In Carey’s world the global flu pandemic has created an environment of suspicion and extremism, in the US at least. It will be interesting (if fairly terrifying) to see how many parallels will ultimately be drawn in the real world in the aftermath of Covid-19.  

Enough of the serious stuff. Ultimately, these two books are works of fiction, if speculative, and as such are a cracking read. You may, as I did, get somewhat bored by the all too frequent scenes of attraction and affection between Loup and her girlfriend Pilar, but skim-reading the mushy stuff is a small price to pay for a story that combines such wonderfully plausible and eclectic characters: bogus priests and foul-mouthed nuns, scrappy orphans and lecherous local thugs, boxing champions and barmaids, Italian designers and international bodyguards, British rock stars and their adoring teen fans, ordinary people and genetically-engineered super-soldiers, in a world that is all too often scarily recognisable.