You haven’t lived until you’ve read about Santa armed with a broadsword, facing off against Krampus. But I found him a surprisingly nuanced character. Crazed, yes, but understandably so after the last half a millennia he’s spent in captivity. Krampus is terrible in the original sense of the word, yes, but he can also be kind.

I actually think he might’ve been my favorite character in the entire book. I didn’t expect to like him, but he won me over almost immediately. Krampus was also a very likable character who could be surprisingly kind. Santa is not wholly good, or even mostly good depending on whose perspective you’re viewing him from, and Krampus is far from evil. In this book, Santa Claus and Krampus are both far more morally ambiguous than their more commonly known myths portray. I also loved seeing the funhouse mirror dichotomy of Krampus and Santa Claus. I won’t discuss the other Norse tie-in as it’s a spoiler, but it was a delightful surprise that I never would have considered. Whatever Krampus’s true origins may be, I found Brom’s Norse mythological take on his story absolutely fascinating. There’s a good deal of debate over whether Krampus is a lesser member of the Norse pantheon and potentially the grandson of Loki, as Brom supposes in this novel, or if he’s tied more to Germanic paganism. I had to do some research of my own as I didn’t know much about the origins of Krampus and was immediately taken in by Brom’s Norse take on the myth of Krampus. This take on Krampus was absolutely fascinating. I have never been more pleasantly surprised by a book with such a disturbing cover. Strangely enough, Krampus ended up being one of my favorite books of the year, providing a depth and nuance to famous and infamous figures that surprised me, as well as giving me a cast of new characters to root for. This book was profound and though-provoking and so much more emotional than I anticipated. What I got was wildly different and infinitely more powerful. I went into Krampus fully expecting a horror novel that ripped Christmas apart. I was reading A Christmas Carol, which has been my Christmas tradition for about a decade now, and decided to balance it out with something completely different.

Picking up Krampus: The Yule Lord started out as a bit of a joke.

Krampus book brom