★★★☆☆ Vanja comes to terms with her history

Holy Terrors

Margaret Owen

Vanja Ros has a long history of disappointing people. She was the thirteenth child of Marthe Ros, and therefore, Marthe believed, ill-fated. She asked Death and Fortune to take her daughter. Death promised her, "Only one of you will go home." Death and Fortune gave their God Daughter Vanja a home. Vanja's mother never returned home from the forest. Marthe, now a ghost, is still furious about this. And so it went. Vanja went into service in a noble house and there she disappointed. Eventually she ended up as a thief.

And then things got serious. A brilliant young prefect (police detective) came after her. She fell in love with him, and he with her, but she left him. She found her family and deceived them. She even became a goddess and failed at that.

Now, to be clear, none of that is fair. It is, however, far too accurate a picture of how Vanja sees herself. When Holy Terrors begins, Vanja is estranged from Emeric, the prefect she loves, and she is trying to do without him -- For His Own Good. She has made a niche for herself as the Pfennigeist. People too low to catch the gaze of Justice pray to her, and she supplies a do-it-herself facsimile of justice. She leaves a single red penny as her token. Her activity, of course, is against the letter of the law, and she needs to keep hidden and on the move.

Then royal family members start turning up dead, with her red penny token planted on them. This is enough to make Emeric come after her. He finds her, of course, and naturally they end up cooperating to find the fake Pfennigeist who's killing royals.

It's an EXTREMELY complicated story. It's made even more complicated by the way it's told. Each major section is introduced by a callback to Vanja's past, to a time when she made a choice that disappointed someone. I read Little Thieves in September 2023 and Painted Devils September 2024. If you'd asked me four days ago how well I remembered those books, I would have answered, "Pretty well!" The correct answer, it turns out, would have been "Not well enough." Holy Terrors calls back to earlier events and characters in detail. Characters from Little Thieves that I would have called "minor" show up in Holy Terrors with major parts to play. Most of them have beefs with Vanja, which they want to relitigate.

Holy Terrors is a brilliant story, intricate, and VERY difficult to follow. Reading it felt way too much like work. I follow Margaret Owen on Amazon and Goodreads., and look forward to reading her future works. I hope something convinces her, however, that she has overestimated my powers of penetration.

Holy Terrors on Amazon

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