30 Days of Christmas - Day 18 - The Last Noel by Dane Hatchell

I'm late, like way late, again. I'm beginning to think this 30 Days of Christmas books reviews was a horrible idea because I just can't seem to keep up. As it turns out, I don't get a whole lot of reading time in December, which makes this hard to complete. But I will try to soldier on and make it to the end anyway. Just don't be surprised if you get the last few reviews in January :)

Genre: Horror/Holiday

Published: December 7, 2011

Pages: 62 (in the whole book)

Ages: 14+

Synopsis

This year, you can wait for Santa by the fireplace curled up to two undead tales designed to fill you with more chills and thrills than ice filled underwear. "The Last Noel" is an action packed extravaganza where Santa arrives and finds a small town engulfed in undead madness. It's not over once he leaves the town, as the plague of all plagues follows him to the North Pole. Elves, proton blasters, and androids clash as Christmas struggles to survive.

Review

So once again, I'm breaking up a book into segments because I can and because I'm already four days behind on reviews and this way maybe I can get a little bit caught up. The selection for this post is "The Last Noel" a short story about Santa and the zombie apocalypse, basically. Since the apocalypse has started on Christmas Eve, Santa feels it is his duty to do something about it, to preserve the sanctity of Christmas as he sees it. He basically becomes like GI Santa. Unfortunately he doesn't anticipate that the bite his elf received would turn him as well, since elves are immortal, and took him back to the North Pole instead of killing him on the spot like everyone who has ever seen a zombie movie knows he should have done. 

The idea behind this story is interesting. I like zombie stories and movies and plant based iPad apps. The delivery fell really short though. Mostly there was a whole lot of action, and a super simple solution to the problem. I didn't feel particularly invested in the story at any point, and it wasn't even interesting enough for me to finish in one sitting, and the entire book is only 62 pages long according to Goodreads. 

Overall I give this story 3 out of 5 stars, because it was really just kind of meh. It didn't grab or hold my attention and the ending was rushed and simply. I would love to see it rewritten as a full novel or at least a novella, because I really think the idea behind it was great and there is so much more the author could have done with it. If you like really action packed stories, you might find this rather interesting. 

Buy the Book

Amazon