Lost Gods

DNF at 70%.

I have to be honest in connection with Brom, I am just not all that impressed by his stories. Sure, they have some interesting ideas, but so far the two I have read (or attempted to read) were... not really anything I care about all that much. Krampus was fun for Christmas, as it was very different from what we usually get around then, but this... No. It just wasn't really interesting to me.

The man's art is lovely. I find it interesting enough, with its dark elements and all. The books, though, they just seem to be too long to keep me interested. Brom seems to be good at somehow creating a moment of absolute dread, of messed up shit, but to me it's all just too much in a way that bores me and makes me feel slightly ridiculous. Not the type of a thing that I enjoy all that much.

In this one a troubled young man gets his girlfriend pregnant and they run away to his mysterious grandma. Which... ends up with the guy being murdered and having to go through purgatory for a mission to have a chance to save his girlfriend and their unborn baby.
Even just that premise sounds a bit like it was just intended to shock me as much as possible and I really hate when an author does that. It usually uses cheap tricks (like pregnant women) to make us all feel the dread, which to me always ends up being lame enough to make me roll my eyes. A bit of that is happening here, even though it is far from the worst example.

Does anyone else notice that the dude in Krampus was also a down on his luck, petty criminal in the South who tried to win back his family or something? At first that was nice enough, a bit different, but now I just couldn't help comparing the two book and wondering if this was all Brom could do. Probably not, I hope not, really.

At this point I don't feel like finishing it, though. It's far from absolutely horrible, but it is taking so long to get ANYWHERE that I feel like I have no time for this. I was expecting something more, something that was a bit less slow. I simply couldn't really get excited about it and right now, when I need my fun times to relax. In a less busy time I would have probably finished it, but right now I simply feel like I have too little time to waste it on books that don't excite me.
I wasn't really making any progress and already started reading the second Monstrumologist book by Yancey, so it's safe to say this already lost me. I prefer leaving before it becomes too much of a chore and I get into a real slump.

Good night and oh my gods, I need some fun now!

4.5 ✨

Not quite as good as Krampus or Slewfoot but Brom is getting really close to being my favorite horror author if this even counts to be considered along side Stephen King or Robert McCammon. Brom's storytelling is so fun and his illustrations are creepy as hell. His imagination is out of this world that's for sure.

The story follows Chet Moran and he is out of prison for selling weed, his pregnant wife had left him and is staying with her dad who wants to kill Chet.
(This is one of my issues with this story is that it's setup so similar to Krampus, which follows a down on his luck guy who sells weed, his wife and daughter left him to stay with her new boyfriend who wants to kill him and he tries to win her back)
Chet convinces his wife he's changed his ways and gets her to flee her father and stay at his grandma's house. Only Granny isn't who she seems to be and Chet ends up in Purgatory. This isn't the purgatory as Catholics imagined though. No sir not one bit.

Brom has created a mixing pool of Christianity and Greek mythology and probably other mythologies and spun a yarn blending them with his own imagination and it is rough I tell you.

There are multiple gods who have their own territory and will jack your jaw without a seconds notice. Everyone in purgatory seems to be able to be hurt but it's way harder to kill them, which may be confusing because they're already dead right? Why yes Gentle Reader you are correct in that assumption but to be killed in purgatory is to kill your soul not your body, your soul will then enter the Winds of Chaos which nobody knows what it is but the general consensus is that it ain't a happy place.

Chet must make his way through purgatory looking for his Grandpa to help him get back to the human world to save his wife and unborn child.

The beginning and the end of this story is brutal to your soul but that's how you know it's good writing.

One of the major reasons I love Brom is that all his characters are multi dimensional and even the worst monster can have a softer side or a side you can understand even thought they're still evil.