Book Review: ‘Krampus: The Yule Lord’

If you hate Christmas, then I have a book for you.

Krampus: The Yule Lord, written and illustrated by Brom. HarperCollins, 2011. 368 pages. ISBN: 0062095668.

Krampus: The Yule Lord, a Santa Claus novel for people who hate Santa Claus, is undeniably entertaining, but someone would have to be a serious Scrooge to embrace it unreservedly.

This is, so I understand, the second novel by Brom, an illustrator and game designer who made his debut as a novelist with The Child Thief, a subversion of Peter Pan. He followed that up by taking on the jolly saint of Christmas, reimagining him as a brawny, sword-wielding Norse god locked in a mortal duel with a devil-like Krampus in a continuation of the ancient rivalry between Loki and everyone else in the Norse pantheon.

Since Brom’s first talent is drawing, the book is lavishly illustrated. Both the cover and the illustrations throughout are by the author.

A nude, dancing fairy from Krampus: The Yule Lord
I can hear feminists screaming, “Where are her organs?!?”

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