Holiday imagines a godly superhero in this debut Christian fantasy novel, the first in a series.

San Diego police officer Travis Holiday likes being a cop. He sees it as a life of service, allowing him to help people through their most difficult moments. His career comes to a screeching halt, however, when his car veers off the highway in the middle of some dense fog. A bearded man in a white gown appears and pulls the broken Travis out of his vehicle, miraculously healing his shattered bones. Travis isn’t dead; this man, Mark, tells him, “You’ve been chosen to defend others in God’s name.” Despite his faith, Travis isn’t thrilled by the news—he has a wife and son he desperately wants to go home to—but he doesn’t have a choice in the matter. Mark takes him to a new place, a spiritual battleground between good and evil called Carnage Coast, where he is to serve as the Iron Warrior, a soldier for God in his war against Lucifer. Once they arrive in the temptation-ridden city, Travis finds a house waiting for him, complete with an underground superhero lair. It turns out he also has a day job: owner of the WWE-like Carnage Coast Wrestling Association. As Travis acclimates to his position, he begins his vigilante work for God (which mostly involves beating up people who get rough with women in alleys). In the meantime, Lucifer has recruited a new soldier of his own: alcoholic sex worker Lynda Lynch, who is willing to use her sexuality to win him souls in exchange for powers to hurt those who have long hurt her. Lucifer has one man in mind for Lynda to seduce: Travis Holiday. Can Travis remain a pure warrior of God, assisting vulnerable women while remaining true to his wife and son, or will he be merely the latest man to fall victim to the temptations of Carnage Coast?

The author throws himself into this invented world with enthusiasm, and there are some fun ideas here. (Readers who are just looking for some vigilante violence in an underworld milieu will find plenty of it.) Unfortunately, Holiday’s prose is flat and expositional, and every sentence arrives with a clunk: “The Iron Warrior is the one who is strong, hardened and dedicated to serving others. Iron signifies hardness and strength. It doesn’t bend or give way to pressure. Warriors, fight for something greater than themselves. They develop themselves so they can be strong enough for others.” The simplistic manner in which the story is told makes it ill-equipped to deal with the many disturbing and violent events of the plot—Lynda, for example, is sexually assaulted as soon as readers meet her. Holiday the author clearly means for Holiday the character to be a kind of Christian Batman, but it simply doesn’t work—the novel is neither theologically nor psychologically rigorous enough to reconcile its Christian messaging with its crude interest in sex, blood, and profanity.

A pulpy Christian misfire with a comic book–like plot.