Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsChristmas Carnage
Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019
Every year, we get a new Christmas book to read together and this was the first year we got a chapter book for me to read to my kids throughout the month of December leading up to Christmas.
I wish I had read the negative reviews before purchasing, as this book is just completely full of negativity. When we started out, I liked the idea of Santa Claus overcoming hardships, but it soon became more than mere hardship; it was truly depressing.
I continued reading hoping it would take an upturn, but it didn’t.
SPOILERS: His horrible (for no apparent reason) aunt destroyed the one item in the world he cherished in a rather sickening manner, there was a sociopathic pixie who talked about how much she loved making heads explode (there is an actual head explosion in the book, described in gory detail), Blizten enjoyed peeing on people (unnecessary and childish humor, which I found confusing as the author clearly wanted to deal some incredibly mature and horrible blows of reality throughout), his father (his hero and a man whom he had always admired) kidnapped an elf for money, a troll nearly strangled him to death, his father committed suicide right before his eyes, etc.
Ultimately, the only reason I kept reading was so we could finally get to the good stuff where he becomes Santa Claus. We felt the payoff at the very end was not nearly as cheery as it needed to be in order to make the rest of the book worth it.
We DO NOT recommend this book.
