Monster Hunter International

The main character is an extension of Correia and that should tell you everything you need to know about his character. Owen Pitt is a Marty Stu: a one-man super soldier that has no flaws and unrealistic abilities, is smarter than everyone and can do anything better than anyone else, too, being the chosen one according to a prophecy, a 300-pound badass, state champion heavyweight wrestler, a cage fighter, an expert marksman that also speaks six languages and has a master's in accounting to round it out. He is the posterchild for the typical NRA gun fanatic loon, espousing the ideology and rhetoric ad nauseum. This is Wish fulfillment to a T--Correia has written fanfic about himself.

There really isn't a plot; it's just monster hunters show more killing monsters with a plethora of deus ex machina moments where he turns back time to win because he can't be a loser in any fight. The narrative is thinly disguised exposition. The best part of this book was the opening chapters where he has to fight his werewolf boss and from there it was downhill into a misogynistic fantasy that incels would enjoy. That this is so highly rated is troubling. Suffice to say this the only book I'll ever read from this person. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Okay, this book was pure fun. That might sound odd, seeing as I'm talking about a book that deals with killing monsters for a living, but it's the truth! I went into this book with no expectations at all, and that actually made it even better. My book club wanted something action packed, Goodreads suggested this, and I chose it just because the cover is some epic art. Oh, I'm so glad this made it on my radar. I have so much catching up to do.

The hilarious part of all of this is that this isn't just an action novel. Oh, sure, it's filled to the brim with epic monster fights and all manner of skirmishes. If you're at all squeamish, you might want to stay away from this series because Larry Correia pulls no punches when it comes to battle show more wounds. However this book is so much more than all of that. Correia also creates characters who you genuinely want to root for. Owen himself is especially easy to follow along with. He's just a normal guy, an accountant, who suddenly finds himself enmeshed in a world that is far beyond what he ever thought existed out there. Owen becomes a somewhat unwilling monster hunter, and it turns out that he's damn good at it too.

Even better, Holly, Julie, Tripp, and all the rest get these lush backstories that just makes you want to keep reading about them. Correia never does infodumps, which is so refreshing. Every piece of lore, every piece of monster related information, is placed in a manner that it feels completely organic. I learned right alongside the "newbie squad", as they prepared for their first fight. I saw how, no matter how much they studied, there is never any way to be 100% prepared. This story had me so committed to these characters, so invested in their lives, that I literally yelled out loud the first time someone died. As I said, this isn't a nice book when it comes to deaths. Death is bloody, violent and, because I loved these characters, often devastating.

What I loved even more was that this book doesn't take itself to seriously. There are bits of humor, silly puns, and every character has their own amazing personality. Everything about this story just wrapped me up in a world that I didn't even know I wanted to visit, and spit me back out on the other side as a total fangirl. I'd read this again in a heartbeat, if there weren't more books in this series to turn my attention to. Bravo Larry Correia! This may not have been my perfect read and gotten that last star, but damn was it fun read. I can't wait to get to the next one! show less

Definitely a B-Movie grade novel. Though this really just means that it's fast and action filled and lots of stuff gets blown up, and the "good guys" are pretty much guaranteed to win in the end. It's fun and interesting and not as political as I had feared.

It could have used a good editing though... there were some scenes that went on way too long (i.e. the gargoyle one), oh, all right, the whole book is a bit too long... too many scenes doing the same thing, and several "flashbacks" to the bad guy's past which really didn't do much for the story.

And the "romance" was kinda laughable... I guess it was sort of needed for the plot but it was a bit juvenile. Some of the characters' motivations/relationships are also show more far-fetched/unrealistic... probably because most of them were just stereotypes and not developed characters.

Anyway, it was good enough that I'll read the next in the series for the action and blowing-stuff-up (I won't be reading it for its great prose or outstanding characters). show less

Owen Zastava Pitt is a warrior hiding as an accountant in hopes of a "normal life". When his boss becomes a werewolf and attacks him, he is recruited into the Monster Hunter International organization. MHI recruits from those who survive monster attacks, with sanity and/or finesse, including a librarian, a stripper, and Baptist in Z's squad. The series launches with MHI saving the world from transdimenional demon invasion.

Imagine if Supernatural's Winchesters brothers founded a business organization, with quasi-governmental connections, with Sam tending to the businesses while Dean tending to the training. The writing captures the military ethos of John Ringo's writing with the monster hunting of Jonathan Maberry's Joe Ledger series.

Owen Pitt hates his job, but the night his boss turns into a werewolf and attacks him, he's had enough. Does that sound ridiculous? It is. It's also campy monster fun, which describes the atmosphere of this entire novel. The story follows Owen after he manages to kill his werewolf former boss, and is introduced to Monster Hunter International, a shadowy organization that is off the grid because its whole purpose is tracking down the things that go bump in the night. Owen proved his worth by being able to take out a werewolf in his office, where he didn't have weapons and he hadn't even known that such creatures really existed. A large portion of the book then follows his introduction to the organization, his becoming acclimated to the show more knowledge that monsters do really lurk in the shadows even though most folks don't know about them, his training to become a professional hunter, and guns. Boy, does this author like guns. The descriptions of them takes up a humorously large portion of the book. As the narrative proceeds, a larger conflict takes shape, with an ultimate evil that can bring about the apocalypse rising up to challenge the monster hunters. Of course, Owen Pitt is just the person for the job.

Here's the thing: I had fun reading this book because I like stories about monster hunters. Yes, the emphasis on guns was too much, so I read through those parts as quickly as possible (I am not a gun nut, quite the opposite). Yes, I found Owen to be hyper masculine at times, which made me roll my eyes. Yes, I think the author's ultra-conservative right wing views crept in to the book a tiny bit, which, ugh. Despite all this, the majority of the book was about awesome monster fights, and I enjoyed that. For the most part, Owen was an enjoyable protagonist, I liked the mild romance, and the action was engaging. It was a super quick read. The political subtext was mild enough that I only suspected the author leaned that way - after I read the book, I saw some articles that confirmed the author did indeed espouse those opinions, and is kind of an awful person, expressing negative and hateful opinions with a good dash of victim syndrome. Well. That makes me not inclined to keep reading his books, but I'm rating this one on the text itself, and not the background knowledge about the writer, or the fact that later books in the series apparently become a lot more politicized and filled with propaganda. This one earns three stars then, because it was a fun action adventure that focused mostly on the monster hunting, but it was shallow and had some of those negative elements listed above. It's likely I won't go any further in the series, but I liked the book more than I expected I would. show less

Well now, that was some fun fluff with some *really* interesting takes on a whole lot of stuff. Definitely high on my candyfloss enjoyment chart.