Very good, for what it is - which is an urban fantasy written by a B-movie addict. There are several scenes where I was trying to figure out which video game they came from, a lot of explicit blood & gore and horrific descriptions. There's also excellent characterization, interesting setups to get them into the blood-and-guts situations, good description both in those scenes and elsewhere, and dialog that rings very nicely true. It's not horror, despite a lot of horrific enemies (was that actually Cthulu or just something along the same lines?), simply because none of them ever give up or feel it's hopeless. That's the real marker for horror to me, how the characters react. The biggest problem I see with it is that it reads at the end like he's setting up for a sequel - but how's he going to keep it up? I mean, he saves the world in the first story - the universe next time? (Though in fact I doubt the effects would have been limited to one world…) I actually hope he doesn't write any more about Owen. More books, oh yeah. More in that universe, sure - with Owen maybe as a secondary character. His kids, maybe? Or trainees. But this was sufficiently over-the-top that I can't see how to continue to build, or to avoid anticlimax. I could be completely wrong - Tanya Huff managed it when I couldn't see how she could in her Valor series - but I'm hoping for a different book, not just a sequel. ( )

Correia, it appears is of the ok writer but good storyteller variety.

Our protagonist is a 300 pound accountant cubicle jockey, who promptly gets attacked by a werewolf who happens to be his boss.

This he survives, because as it turns out his father was a military martinet, he is a prize winning shooter thanks to talent and a childhood with more targets and backpack slogging than television and ball slogging. It also turns out he has a couple of black belts, is extremely smart, was a bouncer, and also an underground fighter of the illegal betting variety. He quit this when he went berserk and also killed a guy, and figured he'd take up something extremely boring and safe - accounting. Being really smart, easy to do. He isn't a rock star, is not pretty, and not a good runner, and no surgical abilities, so not quite Doc Savage or Buckaroo Banzai, but a highly talented individual.

Waking up in hospital after being briefly dead he has two federal agents for company. Their job? Put him down if he goes all nuts and furry. Silver bullet in the brain time. While recuperating, another less formal gentleman comes along, somewhat antagonistic to the two agents. Offers Mr. Owen Pitt his card, for Monster Hunter International, with an offer to come see them.

While all this (and yes, there are gun nut infodumps - gun nut is even mentioned several times) sounds somewhat ludicrous, it works, somehow. Mostly because both the writer and the main character have a sense of humour. It is also pretty funny to hear the self-proclaimed libertarian mucho monster mayhem wielders proclaim 'I Hate the Government', then hold out their hands for the monster killing payments from the government that basically keep this family business running in the style to which they are accustomed.

There are heaps of funny lines.

For just a few :-

'He hit me hard enough to make my dog bleed. And I don't even own a dog. '

'If I'm ever killed by undead, I want you guys to chop me up with it. It's a good chainsaw.'

'I like the world. It would suck to blow it up. Especially since I'm engaged now.'

'Jeez, Milo, how come we don't have killer robots?' Julie asked.

'He ain't so bad for a bureaucratic killing machine,' Trip said.

Plus others of no funny, but equal interest: 'You have three days before the concept of linear time becomes obsolete.'

Also some Easter Eggs in the text for the geeky enough.

Other than killing zombies there is more at stake here. Monster Hunter International is short staffed after losing a lot of personnel in an horrific incident, hence the recruiting.

Or, to sum that up (and add to the werewolves), the End Of the World, Elder Gods, unded conquistadors, human sacrificing priestesses, trailer trash Elves, Uzbekistani ninja Orcs (and chopper pilots), Wendigo, demon plagues, pocket dimensions, gargoyles, wights, Master Vampires, and probably as many different types of infantry ordnance as you can think of, and a few MHI's armourer Milo has made up to go along with it.

No sparkly vampires here, these are of the variety that can take everything a squad can shoot, throw or chop them with, regenerate, and keep coming.

Oh, yeah, and a love triangle involving our protagonist and the female head of MHI, who has some very serious family issues, in that some of them are human challenged.

I kept expecting to like this less, but it is a hell of a lot of fun. Action, horror, comedy.

I'd say around a 4.25, but it made me laugh many, many times, so rounding up.

4.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/08... ( )

Typical Baen title, full of action but no real substance. Still, it kept me occupied for a train ride or two. Enjoyable fluff. ( )

Read a pre-print copy, loved it. ( )