Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Santa Steps Out, by Robert Devereaux

(pb; 1998)

Review:

Santa Claus is corrupted by the wily and pernicious Tooth Fairy while making another toy delivery. This “accident” reawakens memories of what Santa was in an earlier age, before Xians boosted and sanitized pagan myths to their suiting – the seething, angry-at-God fairy points this out early in the book, thereby irrevocably altering everything that Santa, and those around him, knows or remembers.

The first part of this blasphemous fairy tale is filled with laugh-out-loud descriptions of pornographic sex and general nastiness. Nobody is innocent in this explicit tale, not even the elves and reindeers.

The second half lives up to the book’s "horror" label. Mutilation and necrophilia ensue, and other dark desires are borne out.

If you can deal with the above elements, seek this novel out. Most horror novels quiver in comparison, in terms of skewering precious childhood memories and our perceptions of why Christmas is, um, white.

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