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adventurous
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy
Salvación by Sandra Proudman is a first person-POV YA historical fantasy set in California in the mid-nineteenth century inspired by El Zorro. Lola has taken up the mantle of Salvación to be free of the expectations put on her as a young Mexican woman and help protect the newfound peace in her town. But people with nefarious purposes want the healing sal negra and there’s a new salt, sal roja, that is creating new kinds of harm.
The second I saw this was inspired by Zorro, you best believe that I requested a copy. I’ve been a fan of Zorro for most of my life and I want all the adaptations exploring all the nuances of the time period. In this version, there is a light magic element with sal negra and sal roja that adds a touch of fantasy/speculative but doesn’t rewrite history. The two salts were discovered by miners and Lola remarks that as helpful as sal negra has been, it still belongs to the Earth and they were removing something that doesn’t belong to them. This creates tension between Lola and her parents as well as the people looking to take Salvación down and take the salts for themselves. An unnamed Indigenous Man does come into the plot and says that the salt needs to stop being mined, which Lola agrees with and she is determined to do the right thing by the people who lived on that land.
Lola finds a love interest in Alejandro, a young man who is very gifted with horses but is working for Hernandez, a man who is determined to destroy Salvación. When he meets her as Lola, he doesn't have the most positive impression as she uses her real identity to pretend that she’s self-centered and uninterested in what is happening outside of high society. As Salvación, Alejandro is drawn to her and she is certainly drawn to him as well. The romance is on the sweeter side and more of a slow build, which gives the story room to explore the more realistic aspects of enemies-to-lovers in this scenario without going full enemies-to-lovers.
There is some gender exploration but nothing that veered into Lola referring to herself as Enby or trans. While I’m sure some readers might be disappointed by that, I did appreciate that Lola was finding she had no desire to wear dresses anymore and she liked wearing pants and performing more traditionally masculine activities. She never says that ‘she/her’ doesn’t feel right, but as someone who is also Enby, there is a wide variety in which we present and I feel that there is a strong possibility she is in the middle of figuring out her identity within the context that she exists in. ‘Latinx’ as a marker in the marketing feels very apt and I’m excited that we got a Latinx Zorro YA historical fantasy.
I would recommend this to fans of YA historicals who like a lighter touch of fantasy and readers of Zorro adaptations looking for a YA fantasy