Review of "Vendetta: Legend of the Iron Warrior Volume 3" by T.V. Holiday

Score: 93/100 (9.3 out of 10)

We love this series. No, it's not perfect. It's not even all that refined.
It's actually rough, coarse, and a bit messy. It can even be a bit silly and goofy.
However, this series has heart. It has soul. It has action, drama, suspense, and memorable characters who really make an impact and leave an impression!

Making this all better, this is a rare instance of a genuinely cool and engaging Christian superhero series--one that doesn't pull punches in the violence, language, and [occasional] sex departments. This isn't your grandma's Christian fiction. Characters have died and been violently handled throughout the series. And every death has left an impression on us. Heck, we even hated seeing some of the villains go!

Come to think of it, this series truly accomplishes something rare: making us care about every single character death and every single consequence these characters face. Everything seems to have consequence, which is incredible considering that you'd think the purgatory-like setup of Carnage Coast (the location) would create some distance between the reader and the consequences the characters face. However, the heavy stakes come through in Carnage Coast just as well as they would on Earth or in Heaven & Hell.

It helps that all of these characters are so flawed, including Travis Holiday, the Iron Warrior himself. Their imperfections just make them come across as more raw, real, and relatable. Probably our favorite character in all of 2025 was Lynda Lynch/"Sensation"--the secondary-antagonist turned love-interest and deuteragonist in the first book. Lynda has layers to her. And she was a genuinely fascinating and likable character. Her impact is still felt three books into the series. We'll get to that.

We should probably first set the stage.

Vendetta is the third book in T.V. Holiday's Legend of the Iron Warrior series, following Slaying Paradise and Cataclysm. Slaying Paradise introduced us to Travis Holiday, a San Diego police officer who is chosen after a near-fatal crash to become the Iron Warrior, God's champion in the war against Luc/Lucifer. That first book gave us Sensation/Lynda Lynch, the Free Love Initiative, Domino, Ashley, Luc, Abaddon, Loveland, and the foundational question of the whole series: What does it really mean to be chosen?

Cataclysm then expanded everything. We learned more about the seven battlefields, the seven corrupted cities, Crazy Vault, Rainstorm, Monsoon, the Crimson Queen, Leslie/Pink Jaguar, and the Black Sun. It was bigger, louder, more violent, and more mythology-heavy. It was also the book in which Travis nearly lost himself.
Vendetta is different. Vendetta is the consequence book.

Even Leslie/Pink Jaguar still lives with the consequences/benefits of having been possessed by the Crimson Queen in the previous book, being able to regenerate.

This is the book where all the emotional debris from the first two installments comes flying back at Travis like shrapnel. The grief over Lynda. The guilt over Domino. The promise to Ashley. Rainstorm's trauma from Crazy Vault. Rebecca's fear that Travis could fall. Crystal's complicated place in Travis's life. Luc's long game. Candace Loveless's hatred.

All of it comes back.

And it comes back angry.

The book begins with Travis, Crystal, and Ashley trying to leave Carnage Coast in the White Ghost, Travis's beloved truck. They are racing toward the mountains, trying to get out of the Seventh City. But, of course, Carnage Coast is not just a place. It is a spiritual battlefield. It is a trap. It is a calling. It is a prison with beachfront property.

Travis wants to leave because he wants to see his son. That one detail does a lot of emotional heavy lifting. Travis did not become the Iron Warrior because he wanted fame, power, or glory. He was torn away from a life he loved. He had a wife. He had a son. He had a career. He had a world outside of Carnage Coast. Now, years later, the man inside the armor is exhausted from being the hero everyone needs while still being denied the one thing he needs.

That's a strong emotional starting point.
Then duty calls, as it always does.

Carnage Coast Federal is attacked by Diversion, Hypnotion, the Simpleton, and the Diabolical Donnas. This sequence is pure Legend of the Iron Warrior chaos. We get trick bombs, hypnotic influence, illusions, gunfire, costumed villains, police under siege, and superheroes dropping in like this is a Christian version of a Saturday morning cartoon made for adults who probably should not be watching Saturday morning cartoons anymore.

And, yes, the names are still a mixture of ridiculousness and coolness.

Diversion. Hypnotion. The Simpleton. Pink Jaguar. Grenade. Rainstorm. Hail. The Diabolical Donnas. Gosh, if we remember correctly, the latter were sometimes referred to as "Double D's."

This series is many things, but subtle is not one of them.

Yet, somehow, the goofiness works because the series fully commits to its own universe. It is not winking at the reader every five seconds. It believes in these names. It believes in the stakes. It believes a character named Rainstorm can have real trauma. It believes a character named Grenade can be both funny and meaningful. It believes the Pink Jaguar can be a legitimate hero while still sounding like someone who would have had an action figure in 1996. We respect that.

The bank attack also reintroduces one of the main tensions of the book: should Travis even be called into battle anymore?

This is where Cataclysm becomes essential context. Travis was compromised in that book. His faith wavered. His darkness came to the surface. The people around him saw how dangerous he could become if he lost his way. So when Rebecca and Rainstorm react badly to his return, it makes sense. They are not just being difficult. They are afraid.

Rainstorm especially benefits from that context. He is the fallen champion of Crazy Vault, a city that was already destroyed by Luc's forces. He knows what it looks like when a champion fails. His distrust of Travis is not petty jealousy. It is survivor's trauma in a cape.

That's good character layering.

However, as entertaining as the early action is, the real villain of Vendetta is not Diversion, Hypnotion, the Simpleton, or any of the returning costumed crazies.

The real villain (serving under Luc) is Candace Loveless.
And Candace is a problem.
A big problem.
A scary problem.

Candace is not the physically strongest villain Travis has faced. She is not Monsoon. She is not Abaddon. She is not the Crimson Queen. She is not Luc. But what makes her dangerous is that she knows exactly where to cut.

Candace does not just want Travis dead. That would be too easy. She wants Travis exposed. Humiliated. Isolated. Discredited. Broken. She wants to destroy his reputation, his relationships, his faith, his public image, his private identity, and his ability to believe that he is still worthy of being the Iron Warrior.

That's a very different kind of villainy.
In Slaying Paradise, Candace began as Brittany, one of the people damaged by the chaos surrounding the Free Love Initiative and the Iron Warrior's war against Luc's movement. Travis may have saved her physically, but in her mind, he also exposed her pain to the world. That humiliation became hatred. That hatred became identity. Brittany died, in a sense, and Candace Loveless was born. That makes her work so well in this third book.

Candace is not random. She is not just a new villain the author dropped into the series because Travis needed someone else to punch. She is the human wreckage of Book #1 returning with a revenge plan, a microphone, a camera, and a terrifying amount of patience. Candace is consequence with a killer smile.

She is especially interesting because she does not simply serve Luc. In fact, one of the most compelling things about her is that she seems to reject both God and Luc as opposing forces trying to control the story. She wants freedom, but her version of freedom is really chaos. She wants to write her own story, but she writes it in blood, shame, scandal, and revenge. That is a fascinating villain motivation.

Where Sensation/Lynda wanted to be loved and was exploited by Luc, Candace wants to never be controlled again and decides to exploit everyone else. That's the big contrast.

Sensation is still our favorite character in the series. Lynda had such an incredible mix of vulnerability, danger, charisma, sexuality, tragedy, and emotional complexity. She was an antagonist, love interest, victim, villain, deuteragonist, and redemptive figure all at once. That's hard to beat.

Gosh, this book (like the previous one) made us miss her so much. It still feels like there's a donut in our hearts caused by her absence in the rest of the series. It's almost like if Han Solo died in A New Hope

Anyway, there is a stark and interesting comparison/contrast between Candace and Lynda. They are very similar characters who came from very similar backgrounds, yet made very different choices. We gradually learn that Candace was a bit of a victim in her own right, growing more understandable the more the book peels back the layers of who she used to be.

And that's probably the most disturbing thing about her.

Candace Loveless wasn't always Candace Loveless. She was Brittany Candace Lexington, a girl who lost her parents when she was young and ended up with her aunt, Renee Lexington. From what we gather, Brittany's parents raised her with a softer, more idealistic view of life: peace, love, nature, freedom, and maybe a bit of that hippie-dippie "let the sunshine in" energy. Then, after their deaths, she was taken in by a much harsher guardian who seemed to confuse faith with control, discipline with violence, and correction with cruelty.

One of the more fascinating and troubling parts of Vendetta is how it shows a corrupted form of religion through Renee. Renee uses Bible verses as weapons, especially to justify corporal punishment and control. That makes Rebecca's phone call with her one of the more interesting investigative scenes in the book. Rebecca does not just learn facts about Candace. She starts to understand the soil Candace grew from. And, gosh, that soil was not exactly rich with warmth and tenderness.

So when Candace later wages war against churches, temples, mosques, synagogues, shrines, and places of worship, that doesn't come out of nowhere. It's not just random villain atheism for shock value. It's personal. She associates faith with control, pain, hypocrisy, and someone trying to beat the "wrong" parts out of her. That's not an excuse for what she does, of course. Not even close. But it does make her more interesting than a standard "mwahaha, religion bad" villain.

Candace is what happens when trauma meets ideology, then puts on white face paint and grabs a knife.

And that's why you—as a Christian—shouldn't be trying to follow a religion (rituals, buildings, the institution, religious leaders), you should be trying to build and maintain a relationship with the one true God and his son.

Anyway, Candace's greatest weapon is not brute force. It is shame. She uses staged videos, public exposure, psychological manipulation, scandal, fake evidence, old writings, personal history, business connections, and Travis's own insecurities against him. She understands that if you control the story people believe, you can destroy someone before touching them.

That's what makes Vendetta feel more modern than the previous two books.

Luc wants souls.
Monsoon wanted destruction.
The Crimson Queen wanted blood.
Abaddon wanted annihilation.
Candace wants the narrative.

That's scary because it feels real. In a world where reputation can be destroyed in minutes, Candace feels like a villain built for the internet age. She does not need to overpower Travis physically if she can convince the world he is a fraud, a criminal, a hypocrite, or a monster.

And because Travis has actually struggled with darkness before, the accusations sting.

So, we've talked a lot about this book from a really serious and analytical lens, however, it's also impossible to ignore this book's silliness and comedy/humor.

This book made us laugh so many times, and we're not even sure if it was intentional or not. There's a scene in which Ramon literally takes Candace to Suplex City and proceeds to give her German suplexes over and over and over again like he's Brock Lesnar. Then she no-sells it like she's Braun Strowman.

We also talked about the Diabolical Donnas sometimes being called "Double D's" (you know, like the breast/bra size?).

There's a scene in which Travis Hunter is banging on a door, shouting, "Open the ***da*m door! I'm going to end this!" That had a laughing so hard because it sounds more like a domestic dispute between a couple high on crack rather than a life-and-death showdown between a superhero and a supervillain.

Oh, gosh, and there's even a scene in which a character puts up their dukes and says (and we kid you not), "Let’s dance motherf**ker!" like he's Snake from Crab Battle.

Did we mention we miss Lynda?

Anyway, check this book out on Amazon!