♫ It was only a Winter’s Tale…♪

You’ll have to be as old as me to remember that song, but on with the review. This month I’m talking about Ben Aaronovitch’s Winter’s Gifts.

When I first heard the title, I hoped it would be another story from Germany, featuring Tobi Winter and Vanessa Sommer, but this was not to be. This Rivers of London novella is set in Wisconsin, USA, and stars mealy-mouthed, FBI agent Kimberley Reynolds.

Who is Agent Kimberley Reynolds?

We first meet Agent Reynolds in the third Rivers of London novel, Whispers Underground. She arrives in London to help repatriate some American magicians, the Virginia Gentlemen’s Company (VGC), who are making a nuisance of themselves. This encounter with the bizarre and supernatural turns her into the go-to FBI Agent for cases with ‘Unusual Characteristics’, or magic if you are not into euphemisms. Mealy-mouthed? Well, she doesn’t like people swearing around her, because her Momma brought her up as a god-fearing Christian.

The other Rivers of London Novels will be reviewed at a later date in my Forensics for Fairytales blog, but Winter’s Gifts deserves its place here among my comparison reviews.

What is Winter’s Gifts about?

A call from a former FBI agent about some ‘unusual characteristics’ building around his retirement home, sends Agent Reynolds to Eloise, Wisconsin, at Lake Superior, on a cold January day. She is the last person through the pass before an uncanny storm isolates the town. On arriving, she discovers an ice tornado has destroyed much of the quayside, and the retired FBI agent has been dragged away by something odd.

“I saw antlers and muzzles,’ [the neighbour] said. ‘Or thought I did. They were shambling like they were drunk, or not really the right shape…’

So, teaming up with a weather scientist, Agent Reynolds investigates. She uncovers a ‘malignancy’, or bad magical manifestation, caused by the ancestors of the VGC. After a lot of racing around in the winter wonderland, the problem is solved by fire.

So, what about the things with antlers and muzzles?

This is the point where I decided that the author, Ben Aaronovitch, has read too much Calvin and Hobbes. We meet the creatures, which abducted the retired agent later and they are… snowmen with animal parts attached. There’s even one with two heads.

What has this to do with Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes? Snow Goons. Calvin, as you know, is an intelligent and imaginative six-year-old boy who drives his parents crazy. His boon companion is the tiger, Hobbes. Everyone else sees Hobbes as a stuffed toy, but Hobbes is the perfect imaginary friend who accompanies Calvin on all his adventures.

Calvin’s snowmen are always legendary. However, in Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons, Calvin summons up the ‘power of the snow demons’ and brings his snowman to life.

His creation isn’t Frosty the Snowman but instead is a very angry Snow Goon. Not only does the snow goon not take Calvin on a flight to see Father Christmas, but it also starts making more of its kind. And it gives itself two heads.

Just like the snow creature in Winter’s Gifts.

Agent Reynolds discovers, just like Calvin, that these creatures are difficult to kill. Calvin uses the hose pipe to freeze them in place until the sun can melt them. Agent Reynolds uses her gun to kneecap them, but even without legs, they crawl toward her. The climax of Winter’s Gifts requires a large explosion to destroy the mad snowmen.

Winter’s Gift vs Attack of the Deranged Mutant Killer Monster Snow Goons

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Winter’s Gift, and finding Snow Goons in the middle of the novella was wonderful. I just wasn’t expecting some of my favourite cartoon monsters from 1992 to suddenly pop up in a novella published in 2023. I thoroughly enjoyed Winter’s Gifts and then spent a wonderful time re-reading Calvin and Hobbes.