After enjoying Larry Correia’s Hard Magic (my review), I decided to give his Monster Hunter series a chance. Even though I’m not a fan of the recent slate of supernatural books, Correia did a great job with Monster Hunter International, the first book in the series. The one thing that I should mention is that if you don’t like guns or weapons, then this isn’t the book for you. Everyone is packing weapons and loves weapons and occasionally goes into great detail about the weapons they have or are making, repairing, cleaning or shooting. If you thought that REAMDE had a lot of detail about guns, then you’re not going to enjoy this one. So, let’s go hunt some monsters.
Owen Pitt is a mild mannered accountant who hates his boss. So, he’s happy to be working late one night because that means that he doesn’t have to worry about his vacationing boss. So, when his boss comes into the office, Owen isn’t happy. It goes downhill from there when his boss starts turning into a werewolf and attacking Owen. Fortunately, Owen is built like a professional wrestler and was trained from childhood by his Marine father to basically be a survivalist. So Owen pulls out his guns and manages to throw his werewolf boss out the window and land furniture on him. When he wakes up in the hospital, he’s greeted by two government agents who are making sure that he’s not turning into a werewolf. And then he’s visited by representatives of Monster Hunters International. They tell him that they’ve filled out the paperwork for the government money he’s due to receive for killing a werewolf and then offer him the opportunity to join them.
Since, if he didn’t join MHI, the book would be about 50 pages, you know he joins. Owen goes through their basic training and starts going on missions. He starts falling in love with Julie (whose family started MHI) and that puts him on the wrong side of fellow hunter Grant (who’s Julie’s boyfriend). Owen starts getting visions with a dream guide who is telling Owen about a really evil guy who’s about to take over the world. Owen has to interpret what he sees for the rest of MHI and help lead the group to save the world. Along the way, they have to deal with Julie’s insane father (who almost took down MHI), vampires, werewolves, jealous boyfriends, a lot of weapons, fairies, orcs and many, many surprises.
The strength of Correia’s writing is the characters. He makes wonderful characters and shows us all sides of them. The writing brings the characters to life, so you actually care about them. The concept of a team of monster hunters is a great idea that allows Correia to show off many different types of creatures (friendly and not so friendly) with a human viewpoint narrating the action. The plot is well laid out with real growth in the characters (although the Julie-Owen relationship does seem to move a little fast). Overall it’s a fun read, that should appeal to people who like military like stories as well as people who are into supernatural stories. Recommended.