Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners by John Ringo and Larry Correia

Either of these authors, on their own, can twist a pretty darned good yarn, but when Ringo gets the opportunity to write in Correia's world...look out! I have definitely noticed that the gratuitous sex for which Ringo was known in his Ghost series is only mentioned here, and never explicit, which may be a sop to Correia's morals and sensibilities, but it doesn't take much away from the story.

Chad "Iron Hand" has to leave Seattle suddenly, a few steps ahead of vengeful trailer park elves, and gets reassigned to MHI in the Big Easy, New Orleans. Monster hunting in New Orleans is an order of magnitude crazier than most other places in the country, which is a pretty good summation of the city in a number of ways, but the amount of "hoodoo" going on seems to bring out more, bigger, badder beasties.

From swarms of giant poisonous frogs to carnivorious crawdads, Chad and the MHI team really earn their PUFF bounties. Chad acquires a gentleman's gentleman, buys a home, and both gains and loses new friends over the course of the book, including a centuries-old vampire known simply as Jack, who seems to have a proprietary interest in the city, and may prove to be an uneasy ally against the recent invasion of zombie-come-latelies.

I'm not certain whether it will come to a climax in the next installment, but there's definitely the groundwork laid in this book for a confrontation with some deeper force or forces causing the monster outbreaks in New Orleans, where the combination of amateur and professional conjurers has made it far easier for the supernatural to gain entry.

Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia

I'd have to consider this more of a dark fantasy than classic fantasy, perhaps as grim as some of Joe Abercrombie's novels, or Scott Lynch's Gentleman Bastards series. At the same time, there's a certain element of post-apocalyptic fiction, as there are hints that the world was once much more technological before the "demons" came from outer space to attack mankind. It will be interesting to see how that all wraps up at the end of the series someday.

Asok is a Protector, one of a group of select warriors whose primary responsibility is to uphold the Law, and he has spent the last twenty years of his life becoming the ultimate fighter and executioner. He bears an ancestor blade named Angruvadal, a magical black sword that contains the memories of dozens of generations of warriors of his family who have borne it before him.

When the bearer of one of these blades dies, the blade itself usually chooses a successor from their bloodline, but there was a very different circumstance which occurred when Angruvadal's previous owner died. None of the warriors who came to touch the blade were acceptable to it, and it either forced them to wound or kill themselves, depending on how unworthy the blade felt they were, until at long last, a casteless boy, lowest of the low, whose job was to scrub the blood from the stone floors of the room where the sword was kept, touched it and was chosen. This, of course, was a disgraceful thing to happen in the eyes of the upper castes, so they determined that none would ever know of this dishonor, and they slaughtered the boy's entire family, then pretended he was one of their heirs all along, when they sent him to train to be a Protector - an apprenticeship with a very high fatality rate - in hopes that when he was killed in the training, the blade would return to their family and honor would once again be restored. Their wizard altered the boy's memories so he would never realize that he'd been born casteless, and all was well - for a time.

But Asok survived the training and went on to become one of the most fearsome Protectors ever known, until the day when his memories were restored, and he discovered his true beginnings. He returns to the House which had adopted him and killed his real family, and executed the matriarch of the clan, who had hatched the plot, then turned himself in as a criminal. During his time in jail, political plotting by the high castes, combined with an uprising by the casteless creates a situation where Asok is compelled to undertake a hazardous quest, and encounter his true destiny.

Great battles, complicated plotting, and a tortured hero. What's not to love?

Into the Storm by Larry Correia

I've been reading Larry Correia's Monster Hunter series from the beginning, and have really loved it. I tried his Grimnoir series, and wasn't thrilled, but I thought his new fantasy series might be fun. And for a brief shining chapter or two, it was. After that, not so much.

The opening scene of the book is simply brilliant. Lieutenant Hugh Madigan, Knight of Cygnar, is working undercover to arrest a bandit leader in a tawdry tavern in an obscure village. Just as he is about to be brought into the inner circle, a clueless Cygnarian sergeant, Cleasby, stumbles into the taproom with an urgent message from the capitol for Madigan, and refuses to take a hint, blowing Madigan's cover, and triggering a bloody but short barroom brawl.

Madigan has been laboring in exile and disgrace after being on the wrong side of the most recent coup in the city of Sul, and being found guilty of war crimes - although that may just have been excessive enthusiasm about fulfilling his mission. But Cygnar is now at war with a neighboring kingdom, The Protectorate, and they need all of the skills Madigan can bring to bear to turn a platoon of the sorriest bunch of misfits the army has ever seen into elite Storm Knights and lead them into battle.

Up to the point where Madigan and his merry men head off to fight the Protectorate, things are pretty interesting, but after that point, nothing truly novel or amusing happens, in my opinion. I pushed on through to the end, because Correia at his worst is still pretty good. I think the book has a game tie-in of some sort, too, and this may be a chronicle of some RPG adventure set to paper. If you insist on owning the Compleat Correia, go for it.

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.

Monster Hunter Legion by Larry Correia

I really have enjoyed this series by Correia. Just rollicking, slam-bang action and adventure, with a wry twist at times. In this installment, Owen Z. Pitt and his friends are off to a convention in Vegas, the first ever meeting of all of the monster hunters worldwide and some of the shadowy government agencies that are tasked with controlling or killing the monsters and keeping the knowledge that monsters exist out of the public eye. What a mess of monster hunters do to the buffet at the Last Dragon casino doesn't bear repeating.

I'm wondering if there's any way for an author to foreshadow a main character's unsuspected pregnancy without making it blindingly obvious. On page 7, Correia writes, "...my lovely wife Julie had said she was tired...had been feeling a little under the weather during the trip." Boom! She's pregnant, though Owen doesn't suspect it and finds out much later in the tale. Maybe I just have "pregdar".

You'd think a monster hunter convention would defy convention, but as Owen observes, "Regardless of what business you're in, these sorts of things were always the same. Introduce yourself. Applause. Introduce everybody else. Applause. Tell a lame joke. Applause. Thank everyone and their dog...I mean, come on, the people in this room kill supernatural beings for a living...How could you possibly make that tedious? Yet somehow, they did."

One of the things that makes Correia's writing so fun is when he comes up with sarcastic bits, or unexpected twists on genre conventions. I especially liked the super-sekret government agency called Special Task Force Unicorn (STFU). Midway through the book, Owen is summoned to meet with the mysterious owner of the casino, whom I'm thinking is something like Robin from Magnum, P.I. or Charlie of Angel's fame. But it turns out to be a dragon, and when Owen walks into his lair he is talking to his stockbroker on a bluetooth headset. Dragon with a hands-free phone? Great stuff.

So, as all of these things go, Owen and the other monster hunters at the convention get caught up in trying to defeat a vast, existential threat to the human race once more. The monster can pull nightmares out of people's heads and make them corporeal, and any monster hunter who has been around for long has plenty of nightmares to mine. It turns out that this monster was created by the U.S. Government during WWII, as a misbegotten result of a Manhattan Project style research facility that is now buried in the Nevada desert. The ending is a little lame, and the whole purpose of the book seems to be to unite all the feuding companies hunting monsters into a force that can deal with the big battle when the Old Ones return.

It's fun, nearly non-stop action, and will definitely entertain and amuse you.

Hard Magic by Larry Correia

I've really enjoyed Larry Correia's Monster Hunter series, and so I checked out the first book in his latest series, the Grimnoir Chronicles, at my local library. Correia's writing is still quite good, but I didn't enjoy this quite as much.

The action takes place, apparently, in an alternate history after the first World War. Sometime in the nineteenth century, people began to turn up with magical powers, allowing them to influence their environments, or their own bodies through an act of will. There are people who can influence the pull of gravity, call wind and fire, move objects through telekinesis, read minds, teleport, or influence others to do what they want through their "voice".

The protagonist of the book is Jake Sullivan, an ex-soldier who can alter gravity. After returning home from the war, he got into trouble by interfering with a sheriff who was abusing a young boy who also had shown some magic powers, crushing the sheriff into a bloody paste when Jake lost his temper. He ended up serving time in a federal penitentiary, but was released early for (mostly) good behavior and by agreeing to work for J. Edgar Hoover's Feds in capturing others who have used their powers to murder.

At the end of the war, the Japanese formed an Imperium, ruled nominally by the emperor, but actually controlled by a magic user of immense powers, known as the Chairman. A group of westerners, also ex-military, headed by Blackjack Pershing, formed a secret society to oppose the Imperium, called The Grimnoir. Also at the end of the war, the Grimnoir made off with a highly destructive device invented by Nikolai Tesla (analogous to an atom bomb), and disassembled it, scattering the pieces around the world, kept safe by various members of their society. However, the Chairman's minions have finally uncovered the keepers of the pieces, and are methodically killing them and seizing the parts of the device, to be reassembled and used to destroy the West.

When Sullivan discovers that Hoover has been lying to him, and does not intend to honor their agreement to let him go free after a certain number of assignments, he "defects" to the Grimnoir. He and the other members try to keep the Imperium from getting control  of the device, and fight for truth, justice and the American Way.

This book contains a lot of action, some very interesting ideas about the use of magic powers, and a few good twisty plot bits. It has rather a comic book feel, however, and I never really got sucked in to caring about the characters. Fans of action heroes from the comic books might really like it.

Monster Hunter Alpha by Larry Correia

Monster Hunter Alpha is the third in the series from Correia, and he shifts his protagonist point of view from that of Owen Pitt to that of Earl Harbinger, alpha dog of MHI and lone alpha werewolf. The story is interlaced with excerpts from his journal, eventually tying the two storylines together quite nicely. Earl has fought in every major conflict the U.S. has been involved with from WWI to Vietnam, and was granted his PUFF exemption (not subject to open season under federal bounty as a werewolf) for his work in the shadow wars of the jungles of Southeast Asia.

A rogue alpha werewolf has unearthed a powerful talisman that amplifies lycanthropic and other powers in an abandoned mineshaft in Copper Lake, Michigan. One of Earl's old contacts from black ops lets him know that Earl's old enemy, a Russian werewolf named Nikolai is in the area, and Earl heads out on his own to handle the problem. Agent Stark from the government's MCB is also on the case, though he's decided to get a piece of the PUFF bounty on the werewolf for himself by contracting the work out to an upstart group of monster hunters, Briarwood, who are mostly a barrel of bad apples. When all these groups converge on the town, things get crazy in a hurry.

One of the effects of the amulet is that when a werewolf who is bound to the alpha bites a human, that human turns were very rapidly, within hours or days, rather than the usual turn at the first full moon. When bitten townspeople start to turn into blood-crazed monsters, the trouble really gets rolling. However, since this is rural wooded Michigan, and not New York City, the natives pack a lot more firepower and are willing and able to defend their home from the forces of evil. The survivors pack into the local high school gym, which is built like a bomb shelter - it has one in the basement - and prepare for an Alamo style last stand.

In the meantime, Earl is hunting the alpha, Nikolai is hunting Earl, whom he believes killed his mate, Stark is hunting the alpha, the guys from Briarwood are hunting all three werewolves, and the alpha has his own plans to deal with whomever comes out on top. There's a plucky female deputy sheriff, Heather Kerkonnen, right in the middle of events, whose grandfather turns out to be the one who stole the amulet from an uber-werewolf called Koschei, and hid it at the bottom of the mine before he died. None of the other hunters from MHI show up in this book, but Earl seems to be quite capable of handling pretty much anything on his own.

This one really rocks the action, and sets up further adventures in the story arc.

Monster Hunter Vendetta by Larry Correia

Monster Hunter Vendetta is the sequel to Monster Hunter International, and once again stars our friend, Owen Z. Pitt, in a swashbuckling adventure. Owen and the rest of his MHI team are in Mexico on spring break, but it's not for Girls Gone Wild fun; they're taking care of a chupacabra infestation. When they finish the job and return to the hotel, though, a massive invasion of zombies interrupts their rest, and Owen finds himself knocked out, then arrested by a zealous Mexican police after he kills a policeman who has risen as a zombie.

Owen is rescued from the police, finally, by agents from the Monster Control Bureau, who don't particularly like him very well, but are forced by circumstances into keeping him alive. There's a necromancer in the woodpile, and he's the one responsible for creating the zombie infestation, and has other nefarious designs to open a portal to allow the Old Ones (nasty critters out of Lovecraftian mythology) into our world, to darken and dominate it. Owen has once again ended up as the Chosen One who can stop the plot and keep Earth from being occupied.

Later on, Ray and Susan Shackleford (Owen's vampire in-laws) show up to propose an alliance and issue a warning about the strange mark that their daughter, Julie, wears on her neck. Owen is not swayed by their arguments, though they grab him and somehow infuse him with a shard of the potent artifact from the previous adventure, which seems to give him the power, now, to read people's memories, if they are pertinent to the current challenge - handy, that.

A great passage:

Agent Herzog says, "We kneecap enough of these assholes and cut off enough thumbs, somebody will talk. They always do."

"...who were you with before being recruited by the Monster Control Bureau?"

"Internal Revenue Service."

That there's just some funny stuff, I don't care who you are.

Correia introduces us to a house full of gnome gangbangers, who'd really rather bust a cap on Owen than help him, but they owe Earl Harbinger a favor or two. We finally get the scoop on Agent Franks, and how he's able to kick Owen's tail every time they have a confrontation. The bad guys decide it would be a good idea...NOT... to threaten Owen's family, so we finally get to meet his famous brother, Mosh, and his parents. Rather an odd way to introduce his fiancee, Julie, but it works.

Lots of great revelations about Monster Hunter history, plenty of gore and grue, and it actually manages to hold up to the standard set in the first book. The third book is being released next week, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to get it downloaded as soon as possible.

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia

I've run across Larry Correia's name a couple of times in the gun blogs I visit, and thought, when I saw his paperback on the shelves, that I should give his series a try. Monster Hunter International is the tale of Owen Z. Pitt, an apparently mild-mannered accountant whose boss turns into a werewolf in the office late one night, and Owen suddenly displays some teeth, himself, battling the monster with his concealed .357, bare hands, and eventually tossing him out a fourteenth-floor window. While he is recuperating in the hospital from the injuries he received in the battle, he is visited by some governmental agents, who think they may have to kill him, as he could turn furry, himself, and a more congenial yet shadowy figure, Earl Harbinger (is that the Trump of Doom I hear?), who gives him a business card and tells Owen to look him up when he gets out.

Owen ignores all of that while he's home getting back on his feet, with his mother and father in attendance, but after they leave, Harbinger visits him once more, with the lovely Julie Shackleford in tow. Though it's kept secret from the general public as much as possible, there are far more monsters in the world than just werewolves, and the pair belong to a business organization called Monster Hunters International which takes contract work to eradicate the pests before too many innocents are killed. Owen is smitten by Julie immediately, and his infatuation plays the most prominent role in his recruitment for this shadowy group.

As we learn over time, Owen was raised by a father who had been a Green Beret in that shadow war in Cambodia, and has been a gun nut his entire life, as well as studying martial arts. He supported himself in college for a while as a bouncer in a bar, and by cage fighting, but when he lost control and nearly killed a man, he opted to get his degree in accounting, and live a quiet, uneventful life. When he joins MHI, though, those dreams go up in flame.

He travels to the MHI training compound in Alabama, and does well in the military style training there. Other recruits come from all walks of life, including the military, but have one thing in common - they have met the monsters and survived, somehow. Before their training is really complete, a new threat appears on the horizon. A mysterious monster called The Cursed One, accompanied by seven master vampires, arrives on the East Coast via a pirated cargo ship. Owen dreams very vividly of their arrival one night, and when the hunters take on the job of reclaiming the cargo ship from whatever evil minions have commandeered it, he realizes when he sees the name of the ship stenciled on the side that his dream was a true one.

The rest of the novel details the arduous and dangerous quest of MHI to stop the Cursed One and his evil companions in their own quest to bring an ancient artifact to a place of power at the right time. If they succeed, it will loose hordes of Lovecraftian monsters on an unsuspecting Earth, and ring in a reign of terror which is unimaginable. As readers, we become aware that Owen is more an integral part of this plot than even he may suspect, as he continues to dream of the evil ones, and is guided by a spirit who once fought against the monsters, when one of the vampire masters was part of the Third Reich.

Lots of action keeps this moving along well, and it's a pretty good tale. Some fun things include a colony of elves living in a rundown trailer park called The Enchanted Forest, and a separate colony of orcs and wargs who like to rock out to Heavy Metal. The only problem I had with the plot and resolution is that it seemed that Owen's importance, as a key figure in stopping the plot, was too sudden as an intro to the series, and with the only resolution being "save the world", how do you gradually develop character and a plot for the rest of the books? Will every one be this earth-shatteringly important?

A fun book, and I'll most likely keep reading, when I run across the sequel.