The thing about this book is...
Okay, I'm not actually sure what the thing about this book is. There's a couple of points where I felt the author was being weird and wrong-headed, but overall it was so fascinating that I forgave it almost anything.
I found the book fascinating because it was, to me, an indictment of the privilege on which the superhero story is constructed. Loup Garron has special powers; speed, super-strength, yer basic 'I am an advanced biological construct' lego set. But, because of the society she's in, the most that this affords her is the occasional opportunity to get in one blow, which had better be a knockout, because she won't get a chance for a second. She's a woman, and a child, and a latina, in a town run by the United States army and local mob. There is no 'with great power comes great responsibility,' but rather the message she is given is that the power structures around her will not tolerate her threat to the established order, and she had by god better be careful.
This is not what I expected from Carey, an author I otherwise associate with the kinktastic. It seems to me an incredibly female take on the 'superhero,' and the result is so different that it doesn't even resemble a superhero narrative, although characters within the book allude to the concept. There are no clearly defined villains, and no 'victim' to be saved: if there is any wronged party seeking redress it is Loup's entire community, and if there is heroism, it is likewise corporate.
One specific point of Loup's mutation is that she doesn't experience fear. In another book, this would be treated with a sort of muscle-flexing aggression, but in this book, Loup is told from earliest childhood that her lack of fear is a danger to her, causing her to take risks she wouldn't otherwise, and urged to learn the caution others have instinctively. However, on an extra-textual level, it seems to me that Loup's fearlessness could be another extremely female super-power, given the ways in which women are regulated by fear.
Although this is not in the vein of Carey's more, um, BDSM-tastic works, it has quite interesting sexual politics. Loup's mother engaged in something like prostitution, as do most of the women in her community on some level, and this is treated as part of the economy, and neither stigmatized nor eroticized. Several of the characters who constitute the strongest voice of moral authority are implied to be part of a poly-fidelious relationship. And Loup herself, although not quite human enough to be a lesbian, has a girlfriend.
Okay, now to deal with what's obvious to any French speakers in the audience: Loup understands herself to be a werewolf, although not in any mythological sense, and her name, "Loup Garron" is a pun on the French for werewolf, loup garou. Her father, the source of her difference, requested that her mother name her that, because he thought naming her "Wolfy McWolferson" would be a good way for her to go undetected. Also, and maybe my understanding of Spanish morphemes is shaky, but although people ask if Loup (pronounced "Lu") is short for Lucinda, no one ever calls her Lupita, which seems like the blindingly obvious name for her, if she's not going to go around telling people her name is 'Wolf.'
This is a highly readable book that is cynical about power structures, but not people.
