Painted Devils
Margaret Owen
Who is Vanja?
Thirteen years ago a woman went into the forest to meet the Low Gods Death and Fortune. She brought with her her four-year-old daughter Vanja, her thirteenth child, and therefore, she 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. You know the rest: Vanja was eventually given by her god mothers into service in a noble family. After perpetrating fraud and thievery she saved the town of Minkja from an evil Margrave who plotted to take over the kingdom. There is a statue of her in Minkja, erected by a god. And she has a backpack full of rubies, and won the love of a boy whom she also loves, Emeric Conrad. So, for an ill-fated child, she has done pretty well for herself.
But this story (which is a brief and uneven summary of Little Thieves -- which you should certainly read) leaves out so much. Who was the mother who abandoned her four-year-old daughter? What of the family she left behind?
Making her way towards Emeric, Vanja trips on a bridge and spills her rubies into the stream below. To get them back she makes up a story about encountering a goddess, the Scarlet Maiden, and cons the people of the village of Hagendorn into searching the icy stream and recovering her rubies. As the cult of the Scarlet Maiden grows Vanja makes the unfortunate discovery that the Scarlet Maiden is not entirely imaginary. Not even close. The Scarlet Maiden demands sacrifices.
The bulk of the novel recounts a quest to gather the necessaries for one of those sacrifices. But the real story is Vanja's discovery of herself, where she came from, and what she is capable of. This core story is excellent, and it is told with Margaret Owen's characteristic verve and humor. You will find that, as in Little Thieves, there is much to laugh at.
You will also find, I am sorry to say, that much of the time the narrative doesn't quite seem to know where it's headed. It felt to me as if Margaret Owen spent a lot of her and my time distracted by shiny objects, rather than telling her story. And there is one other thing. Vanja and Emeric are virgins. This observation is not mere prurience -- how and when and whether Vanja and Emeric will end their virginity is a major plot point. While this is obviously a matter of considerable interest to Vanja and Emeric, it is less interesting to the reader. Early on Helga, one of the other characters, tells them
I don’t do relationship drama, I don’t do teenage drama, and I especially don’t do teenage-relationship drama.
By the time you reach the end of Painted Devils, you will feel oceans of sympathy for Helga -- at least I did.
[spoiler1]
Overall, Painted Devils is not quite as good a novel as Little Thieves. It bears within it an excellent story, but the fundamentally simple story it wants to tell is diluted by a lot of extra stuff that doesn't improve it.
The book also ends in a pair of cliffhangers that, honestly, seemed unnecessary and overly elaborate to me. Book three in the series, Holy Terrors, is due to come out 20-Aug-2024, just under a year from today (08-Sep-2023). So that is annoying.