Krampus: The Yule Lord

This is a very straightforwardly worded book that has a very no-nonsense plot. I think it’s great if you’re just starting out in adult literature.

part holiday horror, part appalachian gothic. lots of fun

Krampus lore and dark Christmas tales are some of my absolute favorite and I really wanted to like this one, but it just didn’t work for me. The art in this book, as always, was phenomenal and Brom always does a great job of sharing folklore and intertwining it into his stories. For those reasons I did give this two stars, but when it came to the actual story I really struggled to get through this one. You follow middle aged loser Jesse as he fumbles through life failing at basically everything until one night he stumbles upon Santa being attacked by some Belsnickels. Santa drops his magic sack, and soon Jesse finds himself in possession of something that might help him change his life. This was marketed as horror, and it does have some gruesome scenes but I would classify this more as fantasy humor. Krampus in this novel is a fun guy, he doesn’t want to hurt anyone. He just wants to party, collect his tributes, leave some treats, and kill a few people. That’s it. And the story felt that way. There didn’t really seem to be any deeper meaning, just Krampus running around with Jesse who despite the magic sack still manages to just suck entirely. I don’t mind party guy Krampus, it’s just not what I went in expecting from a horror novel or from Brom after reading Slewfoot (much better in my opinion). Which brings me to the other reason this book didn’t work for me: Jesse. I absolutely hated Jesse. He’s written as this downtrodden guy, just down on his luck, no self esteem, doesn’t understand why his wife left him, boo hoo poor Jesse even though everything that went “wrong” was a result of his own behaviors or choices. Jesse is boring, Jesse is a baby, Jesse sucks and I felt nothing for him as a character. When you don’t connect or care for the main character it is SO hard to get into the story and I really tried, but I couldn’t care about a character with no personality other than he’s a big dumb loser. In Slewfoot, you had dislikable characters and you had characters that fit a certain stereotype but Brom also managed to craft a strong female protagonist and other supporting characters that kept you engaged. This was not the case for me with Krampus. I would honestly say the only character that I was even mildly invested in was Krampus himself and everyone else just faded into the background. For me this one lacked a strong story, it lacked engaging characters, it lacked horror elements, and it was a slog to get through. I’ve heard others that really loved this one and I think if you’re more into fantasy or like fake humor might enjoy this more, but if you’re here for the horror like I was, I would say pass this one by and read Slewfoot instead.