Author: Brom
Series: Standalone
Genre: Horror/Mythology/Fantasy
Publisher: Harper Voyager
Publication Date: October 30, 2012
Edition: 373 pages, Kindle Edition
Source: Library
Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | BAM | Bookshop | Powell's | Thriftbooks
Synopsis:
Santa Claus, my dear old friend, you are a thief, a traitor, a slanderer, a murderer, a liar, but worst of all you are a mockery of everything for which I stood. You have sung your last ho, ho, ho, for I am coming for your head. . . . I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide . . .
—from Krampus
One Christmas Eve in a small hollow in Boone County, West Virginia, struggling songwriter Jesse Walker witnesses a strange spectacle: seven devilish figures chasing a man in a red suit toward a sleigh and eight reindeer. When the reindeer leap skyward, taking the sleigh, devil men, and Santa into the clouds, screams follow. Moments later, a large sack plummets back to earth, a magical sack that thrusts the down-on-his-luck singer into the clutches of the terrifying Yule Lord, Krampus. But the lines between good and evil become blurred as Jesse's new master reveals many dark secrets about the cherry-cheeked Santa Claus, including how half a millennium ago the jolly old saint imprisoned Krampus and usurped his magic.
Now Santa's time is running short, for the Yule Lord is determined to have his retribution and reclaim Yuletide. If Jesse can survive this ancient feud, he might have the chance to redeem himself in his family's eyes, to save his own broken dreams, . . . and to help bring the magic of Yule to the impoverished folk of Boone County.
The author and artist of The Child Thief returns with a modern fabulist tale of Krampus, the Lord of Yule and the dark enemy of Santa Claus.
—from Krampus
One Christmas Eve in a small hollow in Boone County, West Virginia, struggling songwriter Jesse Walker witnesses a strange spectacle: seven devilish figures chasing a man in a red suit toward a sleigh and eight reindeer. When the reindeer leap skyward, taking the sleigh, devil men, and Santa into the clouds, screams follow. Moments later, a large sack plummets back to earth, a magical sack that thrusts the down-on-his-luck singer into the clutches of the terrifying Yule Lord, Krampus. But the lines between good and evil become blurred as Jesse's new master reveals many dark secrets about the cherry-cheeked Santa Claus, including how half a millennium ago the jolly old saint imprisoned Krampus and usurped his magic.
Now Santa's time is running short, for the Yule Lord is determined to have his retribution and reclaim Yuletide. If Jesse can survive this ancient feud, he might have the chance to redeem himself in his family's eyes, to save his own broken dreams, . . . and to help bring the magic of Yule to the impoverished folk of Boone County.
The author and artist of The Child Thief returns with a modern fabulist tale of Krampus, the Lord of Yule and the dark enemy of Santa Claus.
**************
This was hands down the strangest book I have ever read. I honestly can't say if I liked it. I didn't hate it. But it did feel like two separate stories that got mashed together. They didn't feel like they belonged in the same book.
There's a shift in the book, where I feel like the story should have followed Krampus and left some of the side plots behind for a while. I didn't care about Dillard felt like his parts, while eventually relevant, could have been shorter. That's theme for a lot of this book for me, it just followed the wrong characters for too long.
The book wraps up with a lot of things left unanswered or unfinished. It skips around a little too, which left me going back and re-reading parts to make sure I didn't miss anything. This book was felt too long at times, but it also felt too short with all the unanswered questions.
One thing I really loved, was adding in Norse mythology. I love mythology, and bringing pieces of that into this book made the lore feel real and lived in. I will be reading more from this author, but if this is how all his books end, he may not be an author for me, maybe leaving things as a mystery in this book is part of the point.
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