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Vendetta is the third book in T.V. Holiday’s Legend of The Iron Warrior series. I haven’t read the first two, so I came into it cold, but it turned out to be a gripping and fairly epic read that mostly holds up on its own. Part superhero comic, part dark fantasy, it follows a hero whose powers are literally fueled by his belief in God, set in a world where the line between heaven and hell runs directly through one city, which is a strange enough premise to make the book stand out.
Having not read any of the other books, I was obviously going in blind. The story picks up with Travis Holiday, secretly the superhero known as the Iron Warrior, self-exiled and living a found-family life with Crystal and Ashley, away from the chaos of Carnage Coast. He’s carrying guilt over a son he’s been kept from for years, and he’s cautiously hoping he’s finally left his hero life behind him for good. There were clearly relationships and past events I wasn’t fully catching, but the book does enough work up front that I never felt completely lost.
Naturally, that peace doesn’t last. Candace Loveless, a woman Travis saved during his earliest days as the Iron Warrior, resurfaces with a scarred face and a personal vendetta against him. Instead of confronting Travis head-on, Candace goes after the people orbiting his life. She kidnaps and tortures people on a hijacked citywide broadcast called “Soul Searchin’,” forcing Travis to answer humiliating personal questions live on air in exchange for their lives. Before long, Travis’ private life and his public identity may start collapsing into each other in real time.
Around this central thread, Holiday builds out a busy world. There’s a police-and-superhero task force led by the sharp-tongued Detective Sergeant Rebecca Walters; a married hero couple (Grenade and the Pink Jaguar) working through their own crises; and a very suspicious bank owner. The world of the book truly feels vividly imagined and like the author has spent years thinking through its rules, its history, and its cast, rather than inventing threats on the fly to fill pages. It gave me real Skulduggery Pleasant vibes.
Where the novel succeeds most is in its imaginative worldbuilding and central conceit. A hero whose powers are fueled by literal faith, and whose crisis of doubt is therefore also a physical liability, gives the book a unique premise. Candace herself is a far stronger villain than the slightly ridiculous plot suggests at first glance. A Rebecca POV chapter tracing her abusive upbringing recontextualizes her cruelty as not simply monstrous, and it’s some of the most engaging sections in the whole novel.
Structurally, the book moves in bursts: a tense set piece, a quieter character scene, then another set piece, often escalating in stakes each time. That rhythm mostly works and kept me turning pages, though a few chapters clearly somewhat assume familiarity with earlier events that might make a newcomer like me a bit lost.
The book also shifts POV frequently and without much warning, cutting between Travis, Rebecca, Candace, Leslie, and others sometimes within the same chapter. It’s an ambitious way to cover so much ground, and it does let you see the same crisis from multiple angles, but the transitions aren’t always clearly signposted, so I occasionally had to backtrack a paragraph to figure out whose head I was in. It’s also worth knowing going in that the book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.
Where the book stumbles is mostly in its prose, which although generally well-edited sometimes could be improved, and leans heavily on stage-directing emotion. Characters sigh, scoff, roll their eyes, and clench their fists so often that some passages read more like blocking notes than lived-in reaction, which can undercut dialogue that’s otherwise doing real work.
A handful of extended philosophical debates about faith, ego, and how God communicates with people slow the pacing a bit. They’re thought-provoking and clearly important to what the author is trying to say, but they arrive at the cost of momentum. While a nice addition, I’m also not sure the pictures that divide the chapters are really necessary. Sometimes it may be best left up to the reader’s imagination, and likewise the serio-comic tone may confuse some readers.
“I believe we’re all one. Everything is God, simply experienced differently. He resides in you, me, all of us. I feel like it’s true, but sometimes… I wonder if I’m only telling myself what I want to hear,” Travis revealed.
Coming to Vendetta with no prior knowledge of the series, I still found plenty to like: an original premise, a menacing villain, and a handful of character moments that hit as hard as the big action sequences around them. I’d recommend it to Christian fantasy fans, or genre readers who want something that takes its spiritual themes seriously rather than using them as set dressing. Just go in knowing you won’t get a tidy ending.
Final verdict: For fans of Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners, Empire of the Vampire or This Present Darkness, Vendetta is a big-hearted, ambitious book with emotional stakes and a great villain. Recommended for readers who enjoy their superhero fiction but who don’t mind a book that asks hard questions.
You can get your copy of T.V. Holiday’s Vendetta: Legend of The Iron Warrior Vol. 3 or read for free on Kindle Unlimited here!
