Book Review: Gothic Blue Book VI: A Krampus CarolEdited by Cynthia Pelayo
A Krampus Carol is the sixth offering in Burial Day’s Gothic Blue Book series, this one centred around Christmas, and the darkness lurking behind all that light. Some of these are focused on Krampus, others taking a different approach, but as an anthology this one is really solid.
There’s a nice mixture of names familiar to those within the horror community, and names which will be more fresh to readers. Writing really solid stories is difficult, combining horror and Christmas is a feat which needs a very talented hand, and somehow all these authors manage to pull it off wonderfully, while keeping with the ‘gothic’ feel to the collection. But also, just take a look at that cover, it’s freaking beautiful.
Let’s dive into some of the stories featured here.
Nico Bell’s “The Night of Epiphany” shows a portrait of a grieving family, and a young woman struggling to move on from her mother’s death. The creep factor is only outdone by the grief threaded through, in a really excellent way. “Yule Log” by T.M. Brown is a gothic plague tale, where something worse than disease waits in the shadows. Laurel Hightower once more shows she can kick ass with any length of story in her tale “Black Lace Binding”, which leans fully into the gothic and keeps the reader utterly enraptured. There’s poetry in the book too, with an excellent offering by Shane Douglas Keene, “I Am a Fortress”.
Hailey Piper presents “The Last Noel”, which is as scary as it is heart-breaking, wonderfully written and with an ending that will leave you reconsidering exactly what makes a monster. “Queen of the Wassail” is Christmas folk horror at its finest, while Welsh twins C L Raven give us a twist on Mari Lwyd with “Hell’s Bells”.
I really, really could say something about all the stories in this collection – Burial Day have excelled once again with a solid set of short stories. This is the kind of book you’ll want to read every Christmas, with stories that linger in the mind and keep you wanting to delve in again.
Grade: A
Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gothic-Blue-Book-VI-Krampus-ebook/dp/B08K65Q9HR/
Amazon US: https://www.amazon.com/Gothic-Blue-Book-VI-Krampus/dp/1735693626/
Bookshop UK: https://uk.bookshop.org/books/gothic-blue-book-vi-a-krampus-carol/9781735693620
Review by Elle Turpitt
@ElleTurpitt
www.elleturpitt.com
