Monster Hunter Nemesis by Larry Correia

 I didn't enjoy this installment of the Monster Hunter series quite as much as the earlier ones, though it at least gives us all a touch of the bigger picture, and a peek behind the scenes of some of the larger conflicts, and has a most puzzling twist in the last few sentences.

This one is all about agent Franks, short for Frankenstein, of the MCB. The rogue agents who are highly placed within the MCB have decided to go after former director Myers and Franks, his trusty sidekick, to gain control of the agency and to increase the "firepower" of STFU (the acronym still cracks me up) and its pet project, Nemesis. Nemesis started as a way to build super soldiers with powers much like Franks' but they got exactly what they bargained for, and not so much what they appear to have expected. The golems they built were inhabited by the Fallen, demons exiled to Hell after the rebellion against The Maker, and these soldiers have their own agenda, first to kill Franks and then to inflict misery on mankind.

Franks is framed for an attack on MCB headquarters and goes on the run as a fugitive, aided and abetted occasionally by those agents still loyal to Meyers. The over the top action is punctuated every so often by flashbacks to Franks' creation and history. After being hunted down by mankind for many years, he finally finds a home with the Hessian mercenaries prior to the Revolutionary War, but an encounter with General Washington and a "road to Damascus" moment puts him under contract with the fledgling country, keeping the monsters at bay.

I have a bit of a philosophical, or perhaps literary, problem with regenerative monsters, like the werewolves in the MH stories, or Franks and the Nemesis troops, as well as a few others. In a fight, they soak up damage, heal themselves from devastating injuries just up to the point where the plot requires that we move along...and then suddenly the damage becomes effective, and they collapse or die.

Worth the read, but not Correia's best.