TITLE: Krampus: The Yule Lord
AUTHOR: Brom
INFO: Fiction, 381 pages
GENRE: Paranormal/Mythology
PUBLISHED: Harper Voyager, 2012
SOURCE: Received from Publisher for Review
FROM GOODREADS: Santa Claus, my dear old friend, you are a thief, a traitor, a slanderer, a murder, 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 to take your head. I am coming to take back what is mine, to take back Yuletide...
The author and artist of The Child Thief returns with a modern fabulist tale of Krampus, the Lord of Yule and mortal enemy of Santa Claus.
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 earthward, a magical sack that will thrust 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, and 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 to his family, to save his own broken dreams...and help bring the magic of Yule to the impoverished folk of Boone County.
MY TAKE: I like it when an author takes familiar (or unfamiliar) characters or tales and shapes them into something new and original, without taking away from the roots of the story. Brom seems to have this talent in abundance. He weaves the Nordic mythology in with Christian belief to provide us with a fun and riveting book.
While not really knowing what to expect from this book, I dove into it as a "holiday read" and became completely engrossed. I will say up front that this isn't a tale for small children or the faint of heart. We have quite a dark mash-up of magic, mayhem and myth with a healthy dose of violence - of course, I've heard the desire to kill Santa Claus isn't all that uncommon..
I'm not going to rehash the plot or storyline here, but I will say that if you like supernatural tales with some horror, comedy and human interest thrown in, you'll enjoy this tale. You will also enjoy the fantastic artwork that adorns the pages as well as the cover.
Out of 5 JEWELS, I give it:
Krampus: The Yule Lord is Available NOW at:
Born in the deep dark south in the mid-sixties. Brom, an army brat, spent his entire youth on the move and unabashedly blames living in such places as Japan, Hawaii, Germany, and Alabama for all his afflictions. From his earliest memories Brom has been obsessed with the creation of the weird, the monstrous, and the beautiful.
At age twenty, Brom began working full-time as a commercial illustrator in Atlanta, Georgia. Three years later he entered the field of fantastic art he’d loved his whole life, making his mark developing and illustrating for TSR’s best selling role-playing worlds.
He has since gone on to lend his distinctive vision to all facets of the creative industries, from novels and games, to comics and film. Most recently he's created a series of award winning horror novels that he both writes and illustrates: “The Plucker”, an adult children’s book, “The Devil’s Rose”, a modern western set in Hell, “The Child Thief”, a gritty, nightmarish retelling of the Peter Pan myth, and his latest concoction, "Krampus, the Yule Lord", a tale of revenge between Krampus and Santa set in rural West Virginia.
Brom is currently kept in a dank cellar somewhere in the drizzly Northwest. There he subsists on poison spiders, centipedes, and bad kung-fu flicks. When not eating bugs, he is ever writing, painting, and trying to reach a happy sing-a-long with the many demons dancing about in his head.
For More Information: Visit Brom's Website
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