Monster Hunter International

I love books and am always looking for new authors, new characters and new stories I can read and love and wait impatiently for more of. I'm also a real fan of escapist entertainment. Books to read just for the fun of it and that is the key word here. Fun.

I bring you Larry Corriea and Monster Hunter International.

I'm a huge fan of B Monster movies. Not slasher pics but real monster movies. Everything from Army of darkness to Forbidden Planet. Zombies, Vampires, Werewolves, Godzilla, Hitler's Brain and everything that creeps, lurches, grasps, bites, slithers and oozes. All bring joy to my heart and a smile to my face. In my cinematic world, Bruce Campbell is giant among men.

Imagine then, that the survivors of those monster attacks decide to band together in a wildly crazy group of cross sectional America and join a company that hunts and kills those things that bring our nightmares to life and our screens to movie nirvana. They even have a cool logo.

Meet the Hunters of Monster Hunter International (MHI). Led by the heirs of the founding Shackleford family, they take the fight to the baddies of mythology and manage to get paid along the way. You'll find them all here; Werewolves, Vampires, all manner of the Undead, Orcs, Elves, and monsters straight from the fevered dreams of Lovecraft himself. This is a book just filled with monster movie goodness.

Correia has a true gift for characters and I mean that in every iteration of the word. The bad guys are very bad and the good guys run the gamut from heroic to abnormal to just plain human. He manages to avoid cliche and triteness and has enough zingers and twists thrown in to keep you happy and interested. You'll find characters you'll love, some you'll hate but none that you'll find boring. It's virtually non stop from the opening paragraphs to the climactic final scene.

Monster Hunter International is only the first. Monster Hunter Vendetta is next and Correia promises to write them forever (I fervently hope). I'll be picking up Vendetta just as soon as I can get my sweaty paws on a copy. I'll also be perusing his other offerings. His writing style agrees with me and I'm of the opinion I'm going to be a Larry Correia fan, not just MHI.

Larry, you've made another fan. Of course that means I'll be sniveling at you with requests, demands and sarcastic remarks for more. Some monsters you just can't kill, you must placate them with offerings.

Six

FCC. Don't you people have anything better to do? I mean the economy burned to the ground, the enemy is still out there looking for ways to cripple and kill America and Howard Stern is still on the air. Do we really have to do this? Really? Ok. I have received no remuneration or other recompense for this book review. I'd gladly and without a second thought take some but no one appears to be offering the semi-literate author of a tiny blog vast wads of cash to review books or otherwise hock wares on these barely read pages.
Seriously, find a new line of work.