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REVIEW: Christmas Caroline #1
Book Title: Christmas Caroline #1
Book Description: We all envision Santa’s Workshop at the North Pole as one of the happiest places on Earth. In actuality, Santa is a tyrant to work for. The elves get paid pennies on the dollar. They work horrible hours. What’s most insulting is that “Saint Prick”, as the workforce calls him behind his back, gets all of the credit for their hard work. One of the elves, Jack, is a supervisor on the floor at the workshop. He and two of his fellow supervisors agree to cause the toy line to come to a halt, which will make Santa come investigate the problem. When he does the elves can tell him how they feel and how they want to unionize. It’s a great plan and works like a charm… right up to the moment that Jack’s fellow supervisors don’t follow through. Jack is viewed as a rabble rouser by Santa and killed for it. It happens so quickly Jack’s sister, Caroline, can only sit back and watch. She causes such a ruckus that she is banished from the North Pole and stripped of her powers. Now her life’s goal is to get back to the North Pole and get vengeance for her brother.
Book Author: Garrett Gunn and Christina Blanch
Book Format: Paperback
Publisher - Orgnization: Source Point Press
Publisher Logo:
Illustrator: Kit Wallis
- Story(4.1)
- Interior Art(3.3)
- Cover Art(3.6)
- Dialogue(3.7)
- Mechanics(3.9)
- Editing(3.7)
Summary
I love Christmas as much as the next guy. That doesn’t stop me from saying how crazy I am about the idea of Santa getting a darker personality. Before Christmas Caroline came along, the closest thing we’ve had was Tim Allen’s portrayal of big red in the Santa Clause movies for Disney.
This Santa is not for the faint of heart. He has moments where he hates his job. He drinks. He curses. He gets mad when things don’t go the way he’d like. He’s the guy that’s an absolute jackass to work for; but away from the pressures of work you’re occasionally willing to hang out with them because they’ll pick up the tab.
Kit Wallis set the tone for Christmas Caroline with his artwork on the cover. It reminds me of Skottie Young’s “I Hate Fairyland”, only with a Christmas twist. The artwork fir this book is a little cartoonish. It brings out the best in the story that way.
Santa’s lines are crisp and vivid, making him look larger than life. Making the elves a bit more cartoonish allows more freedom for things to happen to them. In “Lord of the Rings” we learned that the Elvish word for friend is “mellon”. In this story we learn the Elvish word for blood stained, mutilated corpse is “Jack”. Mr Wallis’s artwork made it real to us. I also got a few good laughs over the graffiti in the bar.
If you’re more of a traditionalist, this might not be the book for you. As a geek on a budget, I felt that the laughs I got from Christmas Caroline were more than worth the price of admission. We get elf humor and a chance to see a part of the North Pole that never makes it into the Christmas Carols.
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