Review of "Holiday Spirit" by John DeGuire

Score: 94/100 (9.4 out of 10)

Are you up for some twisted, dark, disturbing takes on some of the most iconic, classic horror characters like Dracula and Frankenstein's monster?

Holiday Spirit by John DeGuire is a MONSTER MASH in the spirit of the Brothers Grimm. This is not for children, the faint at heart, or those with a weak stomach.

It will shock and horrify you. It will keep you at the edge of your seat, covering your eyes like you can barely look at what happens next. And, at the same time, there's a joviality—a celebratory, goofy, hokey, self-awareness to this book. It's like the book knows it's dark, twisted, disturbing, and pretty sick, but also knows that this is cathartic fantasy and that no genuine, serious, actual, real-life harm is being done. It relishes in the cartoonish, over-the-top nature of the violence, perhaps not to a Looney Tunes or Tom & Jerry-level, but you get the point.

Did we mention this isn't for kids?

Anyway, this is for the dark horror/dark fantasy fans out there who aren't afraid of a little extreme (yet mostly comedic) violence. We wouldn't quite put it on the level of dark, disturbing, and twisted as The Dark Mother by Jamilette Cintron, Real Dreamwalker by Ashlyn Jacobs, or Passages of Peculiarity by Mark K. McClain—those were on another level of messed up, but some of the things that happen in this book are a bit messed up.

Right from the beginning, you have an elderly woman (Bridgett Bishop) being mercilessly pelted with rocks and eggs by some neighborhood kids who call her a "Bitch Witch." Now, as messed up, mean, and cruel as this is, Bridgett's revenge plot subverts your expectations and reaches another level of depravity and cruelty. See, Bridgett is an actual cannibalistic, monster-summoning witch with a special taste for children. If you haven't figured it out by now, she's pretty much the witch from the Hansel and Gretel.

She's actually descended from unfortunate victims of the Salem witch trials. So, what's interesting about this book is that Bridgett is simultaneously the main character (arguably) as well as the main villain. Bridgett largely moves the plot forward by being the one who victimizes the children of Killington, Virginia (where most of this book takes place), but she is also the primary sadistic, evil force that the heroes (if you want to call them that) have to stop.

She's a somewhat sympathetic character in the sense that her kind were persecuted for centuries, and we see how badly she's treated by the neighborhood and its children. You almost can't blame her for being angry and wanting vengeance, but equal vengeance would be throwing rocks and eggs at the children, not kidnapping and trying to cook them alive!

Bridgett puts a surprising amount of thought and effort into her cannibalistic revenge plans including having a sound-proof basement constructed with cages and feeders, to make sure that the captured children don't become less plump and unpalatable.

What's also nice to see is that the children and their families, despite the rocky start we saw, are still fleshed out and made sympathetic in their own right. For example, there is Annie Hawthorne, the kind of kid you can easily imagine in your own neighborhood, and her sister, Emma. Annie admires Harry Houdini, which is ironic given her predicament.

Their family feels like a pretty typical churchgoing American family at first, the sort of people who debate whether Halloween is too spooky or secular but still love their kids and want to do right by them. When Annie and Emma are taken, they are not just nameless horror-movie children to be menaced and sacrificed. They have parents who argue, who pray, who question themselves. They have their own little quirks and ways of coping. When they are caged, terrified, and trying to comfort each other, you feel it.

Then there is Maria Claudia and her children, Ivy and Dorian. Maria is a Ukrainian immigrant and single mother who already escaped one nightmare - a very real war - only to find herself in another. She works hard at St. Mary’s, tries to keep food on the table, and carries the quiet panic of a parent who knows anything can be taken away. Ivy and Dorian, in turn, are doing that kid thing of trying to be normal, trying to make friends and keep up in school while their mother quietly falls apart in the background. When they end up in the witch’s clutches along with Annie, Emma, and "Bad Ass Pete," the horror of the situation is contrasted with the warmth and normalcy we saw before.

The fathers and other adults are not sketched in as villains or idiots either, which we appreciated. There are flawed pastors and parishioners, yes, but there are also decent cops, competent medical staff, and genuinely heroic first responders. The book takes time to show us the Killington Rescue team and St. Mary’s Hospital preparing for storms and emergencies, running drills, and jumping into action when things go sideways. That gives the later scenes of chaos and carnage a sense of weight. These are professionals doing their best in a situation that is way beyond their training.

And that brings us to some of the best characters in the book: the "monsters" who are actually the real heroes.

Count Dracula and his werewolf wife, Aoife, are not suave, cape-swirling caricatures here. They are weary, traumatized immigrants trying to keep a low profile, literally hiding under a hospital and sleeping among the dead because human beings have proven more dangerous than any monster. They are ancient and powerful, but they are also tired and wary, keeping their circle small and their heads down until the children are endangered and they do not have the luxury of hiding anymore.

Count Dracula (Vlad the Impaler) still carries his bloody, sadistic past with him, and it actually comes to light again in a scene in which he has a bunch of sasquatch impaled alive, then lights some of them on fire in one of the scenes that made us groan the most.

But, hey, at least he remembers to put the toilet seat down, something which his wife, Aoife, appreciates.

Saul Frankenstein is a big, hulking paramedic with a heart the size of Vermont, hauling people out of wreckage in a Combi Crawler and providing literal life support when things go wrong. The irony that he has been branded a "monster" by stories and legends while being the one who saves the most lives is not lost on anyone. He is the sort of character who anchors every scene he is in, the guy you want on the call when everything is falling apart.

Then there is Dr. Henry Jekyll and his alter ego, Hyde. Jekyll is a brilliant but socially awkward pharmacist and neuroscientist who legitimately wants to help people struggling with mental illness and trauma. Hyde is the demon child of his research, a cackling, sadistic killer who delights in violence and sick jokes. Some of Hyde’s scenes are among the darkest and most disturbing in the book, but they are also some of the most cartoonishly over the top. There is a particularly memorable sequence involving him biting off fingers and calling them "finger food" that is equal parts horrifying and absurd.

And then you have the supporting monsters like Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, Anubis, the mummies, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Erik is equal parts tragic and theatrical, prowling around like a bitter old diva who finally found an audience that cannot leave. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is more of a blunt instrument, all claws and scales and brute force, and the way his storyline ends (let’s just say “fish and chips”) is one of the book’s darkest running gags.

Gosh, there's a scene (if we remember correct) in which Anubis brutally kills a daycare owner in front of all the children there. We think this was supposed to be a bit comedic, sorta like when the farmer shoots the cow in front of the school bus in Napoleon Dynamite, but this scene kinda bothered us. Maybe that's a good thing. It shows that we (the readers) still have a conscience to identify right and wrong, good and evil.

These monsters are not as nuanced or sympathetic as Dracula, Aoife, or Saul. They are closer to classic fairy tale wolves, the kind of creatures you warn children about. Still, they add to that feeling that Bridgett is stacking the deck with every nightmare she can find, turning Glastenbury into a literal haunted village. They also give the author room to indulge in some gleefully over the top set pieces, letting readers enjoy the spectacle of these iconic creatures unleashing hell before the heroes finally bring them down.

Overlaying all of this is the war refugee storyline with Maria Claudia and Krystiyan, and this is where Holiday Spirit really sets itself apart from a typical monster mash. Krystiyan is not just a love interest or a sidekick. He is a dedicated EMT with his own trauma and survivor’s guilt, a man who has already seen too much death back home and yet chooses to put himself in danger again to save these kids in this new place. His relationship with Maria grows in quiet, believable steps. When he goes out into the storm on what might be a one way trip, it hits as hard as the death of a major character in any war novel.

Now, structurally, this book is kind of wild, and that is both a strength and a weakness.

On the plus side, it feels big. It feels like a whole town, a whole cast of characters, caught up in something huge and supernatural. There are scenes in classrooms, in church, at the hospital, in the underground lair, in the ghost town, and in the middle of a blizzard. There are National Guard units, rescue teams, bishops, vicars, police officers, refugees, and kids, all crisscrossing each other’s paths. The story wants to be an epic, and in many ways it succeeds.

On the downside, that means it can sometimes feel overstuffed. There are a lot of names and faces, a lot of classic horror references, and a lot of themes all vying for space. Prejudice, religious hypocrisy, mob mentality, xenophobia, war trauma, mental illness, and child abuse are all in the mix alongside cannibal witches and mummies. For the most part, the author manages to juggle these balls, but every now and then one wobbles. Some readers may find themselves wishing a few side characters had been trimmed to let the core cast breathe a bit more.

The tone is similarly ambitious and similarly uneven. This is where we can see readers dividing.

If you like your horror dead serious and somber, you might bounce off some of the goofier, tongue in cheek moments. Hyde cracking jokes in the middle of a massacre, the occasional pun, and the knowingly cartoonish violence might feel like tonal betrayal. However, if you are the type of reader who can laugh in between nervous gulps in a slasher flick, you will probably be right at home. Holiday Spirit lives in that space where you are allowed to go "Oh my gosh, that is awful" and "Ok, that was kind of funny" in the same paragraph.

Really quickly, we already mentioned the live-impalement and burning of the sasquatch, but something else that bothered us was how cruelly animals are treated throughout the book. For example, there's a section in which a dad and his child are described as shooting their pet dogs. There's another in which a beloved pet chicken named Suzie is killed and eaten by a grandfather. We could've done with less of that. However, at least these acts aren't celebrated and encouraged, they're just described.

In our opinion, the real hero and highlight of this book is the Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison, who seems fixated on having and describing every possible phobia under the sun, which is actually some of the best comedy in the book. He seems to be the guy who shows up when the day needs saving.

We appreciated the way the book repeatedly flips the script on who the real monsters are. The people who first abused Bridgett’s family were respectable, churchgoing citizens. The people who nearly beat her to death on Christmas Eve were masked vigilantes who were supposedly defending their community. The kids who abuse her in the present are repeating the same sins on a smaller scale. In contrast, the supposed monsters--Dracula, Aoife, Saul, Jekyll in his better moments, and even some of the other supernatural being--- are the ones putting their lives on the line to save vulnerable children.

Check it out on Amazon!