Claus: Legend of the Fat Man by Tony Bertauski (Claus; 1)

The Synopsis:

The Christmas story you never heard.
In the early 1800s, Nicholas, Jessica and Jon Santa attempt the first human trek to the North Pole and stumble upon an ancient race of people left over from the Ice Age. They are short, fat and hairy. They slide across the ice on scaly soles and carve their homes in the ice that floats on the Arctic Ocean. The elven are adapted to life in the extreme cold. They are as wise as they are ancient.
Their scientific advancements have yielded great inventions — time-stopping devices and gravitational spheres that build living snowmen and genetically-modified reindeer that leap great distances. They’ve even unlocked the secrets to aging. For 40,000 years, they have lived in peace.
Until now.
An elven known as The Cold One has divided his people. He’s tired of their seclusion and wants to conquer the world. Only one elven stands between The Cold One and total chaos. He’s white-bearded and red-coated. The Santa family will help him stop The Cold One. They will come to the aid of a legendary elven known as…Claus.

I purchased this book on my own and was not required to write a review. Therefore all comments and opinions are entirely my own.

Review:

So. So. So. Good!

There have been many “origin of Santa Claus” stories that have been told and retold, but I’ve never come across one that went this in-depth and was. so. good! That is basically all I have to say about this book and I’m already ready to buy the rest of the books in the series (6 total); that’s how good it is.

Claus: Legend of the Fat Man merges two worlds together with detailed description, humor, and emotion and ties them together with a familiar tale that is so new and fresh that it can’t even be predictable. The story is told from multiple perspectives from the many characters, but it is never overwhelming in information.

The characters themselves…wow. The Cold One is an incredibly memorable villain and though we don’t necessarily pity him, he is understandable, relatable, incredibly funny, and as odd as it may be, he is semi-likable. Kind of like Marvel’s Loki character. Kind of.

There are epic battles (and I do mean EPIC) and the writing is done so well that I feel as if I had actually been present for each and every one. It’s clean. Can we please say that again? IT’S CLEAN! I can’t tell you how happy it made me to pick up a sci-fi by an author in this big of a market and it wasn’t loaded down with cursing or sex scenes. It was just a great, thrilling story and I absolutely loved the entire day it took me to read it 😉

My one and only minor complaint is that even though the book starts out with the humans in the 1800s, and is very accurate at the beginning, we almost completely forget that detail with how advanced the elven civilization is. Plus, the elven mention that they “copy the humans” in some of their ideas but those ideas happened much much later in our time period (like concerts and firing T-shirts out into the crowd…). It is a minor detail and frankly, I overlooked it for the most part, but it’s worth mentioning. So don’t read it expecting historical accuracy.

Overall, Claus: The Legend of the Fat Man is definitely worth 5 out of 5 stars and I can’t wait to dig into the rest of the series!