{"id":2399,"date":"2010-07-29T15:47:18","date_gmt":"2010-07-29T19:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=2399"},"modified":"2010-07-29T15:54:44","modified_gmt":"2010-07-29T19:54:44","slug":"monster-hunter-international-by-larry-correia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/monster-hunter-international-by-larry-correia\/","title":{"rendered":"Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Owen Zastava Pitt wants nothing more than to be a mild-mannered accountant with a comfortable, boring life.\u00a0 Unfortunately, fate has other plans.\u00a0 His father–a retired green beret–brought him up to be a killing machine, with or without a firearm.\u00a0 To pay for college, Owen worked alternately as a bouncer and a highly illegal cage fighter.\u00a0 But all that’s behind him now; he has a respectable job–one where he isn’t required to kill things for a living.<\/p>\n

When his boss turns out to be a werewolf, however, and Owen single-handedly kills him, all of that changes.\u00a0 A guy shows up at the hospital with a business card for a company called “Monster Hunter International,” and promises to help him make a lot of money killing things for a living.\u00a0 It turns out that vampires, wights, werewolves, and evil tentacled monsters are real, and the business of monster hunting is quite lucrative.<\/p>\n

At first, Owen is hesitant.\u00a0 But when an old Jewish man starts showing up in his dreams, telling him about an ancient, evil plot to subjugate the world,\u00a0 he realizes that he has little choice in the matter.\u00a0 Fate has given him a calling–or, as the old man likes to say, the “short end of stick.”<\/p>\n

If\u00a0 you’re a gun fanatic or a B-movie connoisseur, you’ll love this book.\u00a0 It’s basically Men in Black meets Van Helsing, with enough firearms and weapons to make Rambo look tame.\u00a0 Hundreds of mindless zombie wights?\u00a0 Bring out your automatic 12 gauge shotgun.\u00a0 Giant flying gargoyles the size of semi-trucks?\u00a0 Hope you brought enough RPGs and grenade launchers to go around.\u00a0 Hordes of undead swarming across Alabama?\u00a0 Better arm the 5-kiloton tactical nukes.<\/p>\n

The story was quite entertaining, with enough comedic and romantic subplots to keep things interesting.\u00a0 The battle between good and evil was pretty clear cut and unambiguous, with evil being measured by how many tentacles a thing has, but some of the monsters (such as the vampires) were much more complex.\u00a0 When you have to decapitate your buddies after they die, to make sure they don’t come back as something that will kill you, that makes things interesting.<\/p>\n

I felt that the second half of the novel lagged a little, especially with the number of false endings.\u00a0 However, the ending itself was quite satisfying, with an interesting twist that caught me a little by surprise.\u00a0 The quality of Correia’s writing was a little weak in places, but the story was more about killing the bad guys than crafting beautiful prose.\u00a0 In any case, I don’t think his intended audience will mind.<\/p>\n

Overall, it was an entertaining, surprisingly fast read.\u00a0 It’s not the type of thing I usually read, but I enjoyed it.\u00a0 If you’re looking for deep, meaningful literature that changes the way you view the world, or a clean, wholesome read that’s free of excessive language or violence (Gamila<\/a>, I’m talking to you), this book probably isn’t for you, but if you’re looking for an entertaining story about undead monsters where the good guys aren’t pussy-footing idiots, you’ll probably enjoy this book.\u00a0 If you own more than one firearm, it’s a must-read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Owen Zastava Pitt wants nothing more than to be a mild-mannered accountant with a comfortable, boring life.\u00a0 Unfortunately, fate has other plans.\u00a0 His father–a retired green beret–brought him up to be a killing machine, with or without a firearm.\u00a0 To pay for college, Owen worked alternately as a bouncer and a highly illegal cage fighter.\u00a0… Continue reading Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,405,424,426,425,420,117],"class_list":["post-2399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-language","tag-larry-corriea","tag-monsters","tag-subplots","tag-urban-fantasy","tag-vampires","tag-violence","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-CH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2399"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2422,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2399\/revisions\/2422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}