God’s chosen champion, the Iron Warrior Travis Holiday has plans for a quiet life with his girlfriend and surrogate daughter. Unfortunately, they are quickly sidetracked when a sinister figure from his very first night as a hero returns with a calculated, public dismantling of his reputation. Travis's powers are rooted in his faith, and antagonist Candace Loveless doesn’t want to simply kill him. She wants to expose every mistake he’s ever made and ruin his relationships while making the world believe he’s a fraud. When Loveless sows doubt regarding his character, his faith waivers from public doubt. Thus, his strength falters, too.
Brutally depicting what faith under fire looks like, T.V. HOLIDAY’S VENDETTA: Legend of the Iron Warrior, Vol. 3 is a psychologically dark superhero story. Author T.V. Holiday excels at showing a man whose greatest enemy is his own past, and his spiraling doubts about whether he’s worthy of the power he’s been given feel painfully raw: “I don’t know if you’ve been paying attention, but Candace has made sure everyone knows I’m not worthy of any honor.”
These internal monologues follow a similar pattern each time, though: doubt, guilt, a flash of anger, then a prayer. Eventually, it all starts to feel like a never-ending loop. Despite this, when the story forces him to confront how his earlier, smaller failures hurt innocent people, the moral complexity is very real. Mental health is also taken seriously here. Travis struggles with what looks like clinical anxiety and PTSD, and no one tells him to just pray it away. More affecting than any of the big fight scenes is a quiet moment in the bathroom where Travis, trembling and tearful, confesses to Crystal how Candace weaponized his past.
However, it seems that some of the supporting heroes (including the Pink Jaguar and Grenade) are only here to throw punches and deliver worried looks. Readers never quite get an actual sense of who they are. A few of the lesser villains, too, such as the Diabolical Donnas, are so thinly sketched that they're more like one-dimensional obstacles defined by generic dialogue than actual challenges.
While T.V. HOLIDAY’S VENDETTA: Legend of the Iron Warrior, Vol. 3 flirts with religious allegory, it never forces Travis into a saintly mold. He’s sometimes bitter, other times tired, and even petty. In the middle of all the chaos, his relatable range of emotions is what makes him worth following. Travis is forced to confront not just Candace but himself, and the cliffhanger ending makes it clear that the war is far from over.
What happens when the enemy targets your reputation through a war fought with whispers? T.V. Holiday asks this and more in this uneven yet quietly introspective superhero novel, T.V. HOLIDAY’S VENDETTA: Legend of the Iron Warrior, Vol. 3.
~ Gabriella Harrison for IndieReader