Reject God. Worship Santa!
With a failing economy and dwindling population, the once-flourishing mining community of St. Nicholas in northern Canada is on the road to ruin.
That was until the arrival of the Bingzhen Group, a Chinese-American conglomerate with ambitious plans to buy the town and transform it into the most popular ski resort and holiday destination in North America.
With the deal done and Christmas approaching, the community is buzzing with excitement about the future and the influx of new residents, like Binzhen envoy Ling Wong, Scottish schoolteacher Shona Fleming, new school custodian Curtis Tate and a small army of contractors. What none of them realize is that St. Nicholas was never theirs to sell.
There is something else here which has long laid claim to the land. Something which has long held the town in its thrall and does not intend to give it up without a fight. Something strange and inhuman. Something cruel and powerful and very, very, hungry.
The children call him Santa Claus.
Dark bleatings, my beloved tribe! I bloody LOVE Christmas, more than I could ever put into words. An insane amount, some might say. So, obviously, I was delighted to receive a copy of Hail Santa! – I’m usually over here hailing the darkest goat, but I do also worship Santa, and this book seemed like it would be right up my street.
I’ll be honest – ordinarily, despite my intense love of both horror and Christmas, I tend to avoid Christmas-themed horror. Almost every time, the plot is that Santa is evil in some way. A fine idea, only the vast majority of books with this basic idea are soooo samey, I ended up just totally losing interest and giving up on them altogether. I made an exception for Hail Santa! because the author is John McNee, and this guy is the real deal, as writers go. I’ll give it a whirl, I thought.
I’m absolutely delighted to confirm that Hail Santa! is different. Evil Santa, yes, but the story is so damn good, and the type of evil that Santa is… well… frankly, it’s just superior to what I’ve read before. The entire book is superior…. it’s a superior Santa book.
Firstly, the characters really breathe – they’re so believable and easy to sympathise with that I was totally invested, especially in Shona and Curtis. I loved them. The town it’s set in feels small and homely, and cosy, and absolutely perfect to spend the holidays in. I could see it all so clearly, thanks to McNee’s writing. And on the subject of his writing, it’s wonderful, as always. He writes with a polite and sophisticated flair, which makes it very funny on the few occasions that he says something vulgar or hideous. The pacing of the story is fantastic because the plot is split into acts, and we hit the story beats at a nice pace. It’s never boring, or stale, or slow.
But all of that is nothing compared to the true joy of this story… Santa. Oh my dark lord, Santa. He is an absolute nightmare, terror incarnate. Some sort of folklore deity. The magic of Christmas is a lie, but an extremely convincing one that casts everything in a rose-tinted glow for almost everyone in the town. In that regard, it reminded me a little bit of Stephen King’s IT, in that the Derry townsfolk sort of know something effed up permeates their hometown, but they also don’t really see it.
There are a few people, however, that are not under Santa’s spell, and they see things for what they really are, and Santa for what he actually is. These scenes, where people are glimpsing the truth, are completely horrific. There’s one scene in particular where Santa is giving a bunch of kids eggnog… I will never be able to scrub the images that McNee conjured from my brain. Ever.
Oh, but McNee doesn’t stop there. Santa is a truly despicable and terrifying entity, the kind that makes your flesh crawl, but the image of what he looks like is secondary to the heinous things that he’s doing. Oh god, the stuff he’s doing.
The scenes of horror in this book are incredible and I’ll admit that I was caught off-guard by the sheer awesomeness because I didn’t know that McNee had this sort of stuff lurking in his imagination. I know him in real life, you see, and have had the pleasure of hanging out with him a few times, and I know him to be a very pleasant and calm person with impeccable manners and social grace. Which is why it was so shocking to me when limbs started flying and bits of people were just being flung left, right, and centre. The deaths are so epically savage, and the fact that John is such a wordsmith and writes so beautifully actually makes it all the more brutal.
Overall, I was delighted, impressed, and absolutely, thoroughly entertained. Please pardon my language, but what a fucking great book for the holidays! Easily, hands down, my favourite Christmas horror story across any medium. It has been crowned the reigning festive champion, and by a significant margin.
I’d recommend this to literally every single person in the entire world. Sincerely, my enthusiasm for Hail Santa! knows no bounds. Also, I’m extremely excited that Christmas is now only a week away to this day. Can you tell?
If you’d like to get your own copy, or check out the author or publisher, I have popped the links you need below:
Happy Goat Horror 
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