Title: Holy Terrors
Author: Margaret Owen
Genre: Fantasy, YA
Rating: 5 out of 5
It’s been nearly two years since Vanja brought down the cult she started, and she’s still paying the price. As the Pfennigeist, she bucks the law in order to help the desperate and haunt the corrupt all across the empire—and no matter what, she works alone.
But an impossible killer is tearing through royalty, and leaving Vanja’s signature red penny on every victim. Suddenly the Pfennigeist is no longer a folk hero but a nightmare. When even the Blessed Empress falls, the empire’s seven royal families must gather to elect her successor within a matter of weeks, or risk the collapse of reality itself… even though it puts every house in the killer’s sights.
Vanja tells herself she’s wading into the royalty’s vicious games only to save the name she made, and the loved ones also in jeopardy. But the Order of Prefects has also put their sharpest official on the case, the one who swore he’d always find Vanja—until she broke his heart. Journeyman Prefect Emeric Conrad may no longer be the boy Vanja knew, but they’ll have to work together one last time to have any chance of surviving the deadly catastrophe coming for them all.
With bloody conspiracy, sinister magic, and old adversaries closing in, it will take everything Vanja has to save not just the people she loves, but the future she’s fought for.
I really loved this! Vanja’s voice, her wry sarcasm, is just so on point it had me laughing all through the book. She’s a great character: she can see her flaws, but she just goes ahead anyway—and somehow it works out for the best (mostly). Emeric is so uptight it makes me laugh—and Vanja’s descriptions of him are even funnier. Junior and the sausages probably made me laugh the most.
As far as the murder mystery…I never had a clue what was going on, who was going to die next, or who the murderer was—much less how Vanja was going to figure out the whole mess. I enjoyed all of this book immensely!
Margaret Owen has a degree in Japanese. Holy Terrors is her newest novel.
(Galley courtesy of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review.)
Tomorrow Is Another Day 