Thanks to the many time portals and fractures left open during Santa's battle with Father Time, ancient Atlanteans are coming through a wormhole in the Caribbean wing of the Atlantic. Along with their arrival, the ruins of Atlantis are rising to the surface, causing catastrophic flooding around the globe. Called in by the United Nations to assist in negotiations with the king of Atlantis, Santa Claus and old friend Vladimir Putin seek to find a peaceful way for all races to coexist without sending a large chunk of dry land into the bring deep.
However, all chances for peace are off the table when a new object begins to emerge off the coast of Australia: the evil elder God, Cthulhu! As nothing in the present day is able to defeat the Eldritch horror, Father Time's predecessor, the Time Raptor travels through time and the multiverse to assemble a ragtag team of warriors, assassins and a dragon or two to defeat the ancient evil once and forever!
Yes, the mystery character that I've been trying to not spoil in my previous two reviews of Ben Wolf's Santa Saves Christmas series is Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Since all 3 books were written before Putin began his lengthy and seemingly endless assault on Ukraine, he's sort of like an anti-hero. He's bad and has done evil things, but he's also willing to save not only Christmas, but his beloved Russia from countless crises. Plus it helps to have the leader of the largest country in the world in order to gain unprecedented access to top secret technology or to get your foot in the door of the UN Building.
Should Eldritch Horrors Be Forgot was my least favorite of the trilogy. I still liked it. It just that it really felt like Ben Wolf was being really self-indulgent here. They're be these scenes where a character, very tongue in cheek would reply 'Who writes this stuff?' Once was clever. Twice was an inside joke. But at a pace of about once every 3 chapters felt really out of place; especially since neither previous book did this.
Something Ben Wolf adds at the end of each book is a 'shameless plug' in which Santa and other characters rave about the author's other works. At about page 200, one of the new characters brought over by the Time Raptor, was using a weapon that sounded really familiar. Yet, it's not something from What The Frost? or It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Raptors. So I grabbed my copy of this book and headed into our office and consulted Amazon. Sure enough, all of these new characters are from other books written by Wolf. Thus, the author wasn't just being immoderate. He was also giving readers a clue about how his other works tie-in.
I'm not sure if some of Ben Wolf's other books are my cup of tea. Many are more fantasy heavy for my taste. However, his standalone Western, Unlucky, about the gunslinger Dalton has peaked my interest.
Also, thanks to my Amazon research, I discovered that there's a new book in the Santa Saves Christmas series. It's digital only. However, it promises to address the elephant in the room with the presence of Putin in these books. Especially as Russia's current political situations has made their president's role in these books a little more troubling. hey, I've got something to look forward to next Christmas reading season!
Lastly, I got to talk about my favorite character in the series, the cowardly but entrepreneurial Snoot. I almost replaced him as my favorite character with Putin of all people because he got ultra slimy. (Also, if an author can make a sadistic tyrant likable, he must be a good writer.) Snoot now has a girlfriend in the Uber rich business woman Gen. They're obviously having a physical relationship. But Snoot kept making everything with her about sex, even when she's trying to help save the world. It got as annoying as Wolf's love of having every character respond to Snoot's comments with eye rolls. Folks can show disgust in other physical ways.
Thankfully, Gen puts Snoot in his place before the book's end. Hopefully, we'll see a little more character growth in the online book and hopefully further adventures of Santa saving the world. Just take it down a notch with the repetition. I would hate for a great thing to become stale.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.
