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Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Totally the best dystopic queer orphan superpowered Latina boxing novel I've ever read.

Some of you guys are going to seriously dig this. (Or, you know, already did. In 2008.) It's about the daughter of a super soldier trapped in a militarized border town, and social injustice, and vengeance. And it's throwing down some interesting stuff. Our heroine tries on and discards assorted narratives – vigilante folk hero, redemptive underdog boxing hero. It's sorta about how when you change the gender of the protagonist, the shape of the story changes too, and it's sorta about what would have to be "wrong" with a woman for her to bend these stories around her (Loup is physiologically incapable of fear, even when it would be really useful).

But only sorta, because a lot of stuff gets thrown down, and most of it never gets picked back up again. I kept waiting for this book to be more than it was. And it was entertaining, don't get me wrong, but there was a promise of greatness here, and I don't think it was fulfilled.

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Kushiel's Avatar by Jacqueline Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Further adventures of fantasy!France’s most beautiful traveling courtesan who is marked by the gods to have a lot of kinky sex.

I have a lot of thoughts about this series suddenly. Funny, since in the past it was my go to law school exams reading choice.

Thing 1: I really like how this series talks about women’s power – political, sexual, subversive. And how the thrust of the whole thing revolves around the love/hate of two extraordinary and powerful women. How often do you see that?

Thing 2: The shape of the book is a bit . . . something. It can best be summarized as ‘our heroine travels to an isolated place and frees the people there by being braver or smarter or specialer than they are.’ This was pretty interesting when she was lifting the harem of a psychopath into revolt. A lot less interesting and a lot more eyebrow-raising when she starts doing it to other cultures.

Thing 3: It’s funny just how unengaging I found so much of this. Heroine is literally marked by a god to suffer, to be able to bear it so other people don’t have to. It’s a literalization of the implicit shape of a lot of epic fantasy, and of course a pretty good metaphor for the relationship of writer to character. You, my creation, carry this hurt, walk this dark path so I don’t have to. Yeah, I’ve written that. And I should like it, but I just . . . eh. Tepid. Perhaps it’s too literal?

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Kushiel's Chosen by Jacqueline Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Perhaps some day I will read one of these BDSM courtesan-spy epic fantasy doorstops and actually be able to talk about it afterwards, but today is not that day. Because right now, I am just so fucking grateful to this book, it has eclipsed the book itself – unintentionally hilarious, strangely unproblematic – almost entirely. This is what I read during the final two weeks of my last semester in law school. It’s what I read on the eight minute dog walking breaks, what I read when I snapped awake at 4:30 in the morning but just could not face studying more right then, what I read when I took a half-hour breather twelve-hours out from the end when the euphoria started setting in, it’s what I read on the train in to my exams. And you know, there were pirates! And prison breaks! And kinky lesbian sex scenes! And great battles! But I barely noticed, because this book was pleasant in a white noise kind of way, and it was long so I didn’t have to face finding something else to read, and it just tra-la-la’ed along for 600 pages whether I was paying attention or not. Basically it was the book equivalent of someone quietly holding your hand and telling you about their day just so you could listen to the sound of their voice and not worry about the sense of it.

Oh my God, Jacqueline Carey. Thank you thank you thank you.

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Kushiel's Dart by Jacqueline Carey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Epic BDSM prostitution fantasy. Young woman in fantasy!Europe is raised by a court spy to be a courtesan. Politics and adventure ensue.

I was trying to figure out which word is most important up there, by the way, but actually I think it works out that there's one that doesn't matter much. To wit: epic! BDSM! Prostitution! . . . fantasy.

And the really funny thing about this book is that an epic BDSM prostitution fantasy would generally evoke a response, one way or another. I mean, you'd really think, right? And yet here . . . not really. It's an interesting book, by turns annoyingly portentous and accidentally hilarious (there's no intentional humor, by the way) and then sometimes genuinely interesting. But mostly it was the book equivalent of white noise – soothing, better than silence, just there.

Epic BDSM prostitution fantasy. White noise. Who'da thunk.

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Entries tagged with au: jacqueline carey

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

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May 2025

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