Overall Performance: Narration Rating: Story Rating:.That was such a breath of fresh air that it gets four stars.' Those things being that some urban fantasy standards were missing. The pacing issue there would have gotten this book just three stars, except for a couple of things. 'This book started out pretty slowly and I wasn't interested at all until about ten chapters in when it really picked up. And like the reincarnation of their patron saint, she will bring hope to all of Santa Olivia. Eventually, the orphans find an outlet for their frustrations: They form a vigilante group to support Loup Garron, who, costumed as their patron saint, Santa Olivia, uses her special 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. The 'Wolf-Men' were engineered to have superhuman strength, speed, sensory capability, stamina, and a total lack of fear, and Loup, named for and sharing her father's wolf-like 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 manipulated and used by the U.S. military base inside a demilitarized buffer zone between Texas and Mexico. Loup Garron was born and raised in Santa Olivia, an isolated, disenfranchised town next to a U.S.

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey