Lost Gods

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.