Krampus
Other than a quick train through Boresville at around the halfway mark (about fifty pages right smack dab in the center of this book I found my interest drifting along with my eyelids) it's a damn-near perfect read. It has everything an man child like myself looks for in a piece of fiction. Viscera, plot, wild characters, action, humor, and redemption through trials. Yup, I dug the fuck outta this book.Brom is an artist. Literally. He created the fantastic artwork that graces the cover of the book, as well as the imagery within, which is at times creepy but always gorgeous. I suggest getting a version with the artwork. I went all out and got the ebook with the audio book companion, and the experience was quite epic. Kirby Heyborne's narration is some of the best I've heard. He's better than Will Patton, and as good as Jim Dale and Andrew Macleod, at least in the range department. Everybody sounded different, and I love it when a narrator can pull that off. Feels like those old radio plays they used to air before television was a thing (no, I'm not old enough to remember them, but my grandparents had some of the recordings, and I was allowed to listen to them whenever I visited), only there's one guy instead of an entire cast. Kirby Heyborne's the real deal. If I'm preaching to the choir, I apologize, but I've never heard of the guy.
I honestly did not expect to fall in love with Krampus, but I did. In my eyes, this book is a tragedy. Poor unloved, un-worshiped Krampus, whiling away the hours in his pit, shackled to the wall, plotting his revenge, sharpening his teeth and horns... Anyway, he's such a great character that I sometimes forgot he was a seven-foot-tall demon-thing. He was cool. I wanted to have a beer with him. Shoot the shit. Play toss-a-ring with his antlers.
Finally, Krampus has one of the cooler catchphrases that I've come across, and it fits the tone of the novel exquisitely: "Time to be terrible!"
In summation: I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who takes Christmas too seriously. This is a dark comedy, and it shits on numerous beliefs before focusing on one in particular. The magic is magical, the gore is gory, the humor is humory; what more could you ask for? Recommended around Krampusnacht, or if you prefer, Christmas.
