Reads Like a Screen Play: Unholy Night

I enjoyed Seth Grahame-Smith's Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter and assumed his latest, Unholy Night, would be just as clever and original.  It isn't.  SG-S has rewritten the story of the three magi, turning them into criminals who happen to escape from jail after stripping the clothes off the three priests who come to console them the night before their scheduled execution.  Balthazar takes the lead, also known as the Ghost of Antioch, whose career began as a pickpocket, moved on to grave robber, and then to just out and out highwayman.  Gaspar and Melchior are interchangeable side kicks, notwithstanding one's prowess as a sword fighter.

And of course all the other New Testament folk make their appearances:  Herod, Pontius Pilate, Augustus Caesar, as well as JMJ on their flight to Egypt.  That escape is the most Indiana Jones of all:  not only do legions of Roman soldiers pop up continuously and relentlessly but the last "real" remaining magus whom Caesar sends to Herod raises the dead from their catacombs to attack the fleeing holy family.

If an author is going to fictionalize history or myth, do it big -- make the President a vampire.  As much as SG-S writes to make the story visual and fast paced, it is droll and predictable.  Nothing I would recommend.