Monster Hunter International

Publisher's Summary

Five days after Owen Zastava Pitt pushed his insufferable boss out of a 14th story window, he woke up in the hospital with a scarred face, an unbelievable memory, and a job offer.

It turns out that monsters are real. All the things from myth, legend, and B-movies are out there, waiting in the shadows. Officially secret, some of them are evil, and some are just hungry. On the other side are the people who kill monsters for a living. Monster Hunter International is the premier eradication company in the business. And now Owen is their newest recruit.

It's actually a pretty sweet gig, except for one little problem. An ancient entity known as the Cursed One has returned to settle a centuries-old vendetta. Should the Cursed One succeed, it means the end of the world, and MHI is the only thing standing in his way.

With the clock ticking towards Armageddon, Owen finds himself trapped between legions of undead minions, belligerent federal agents, a cryptic ghost who has taken up residence inside his head, and the cursed family of the woman he loves. Business is good.... Welcome to Monster Hunter International.

©2009 Larry Correia (P)2011 Audible, Inc.

My second Monster Hunter book

This is my second Monster Hunter book and the first in this series. My first read ( or listen ) was Monster Hunter Memoirs Grunge and that was really cheesy, with a main character who was a real douche. This book seems to have a little of the same problem with it's main character , but not nearly to the same degree. This story was well thought out and has several likable monster hunters and monsters. There is non stop action and a variety of cool monsters. I think it became a bit unbelievable when the main characters keep miraculously surviving unsurvivable situations. Having said this I might give book number two a try also.

86 of 102 people found this review helpful

Suprizingly entertaining

Why should I buy this book? A valid question I had to ask myself when I was reading the description. Let's face it, if you like werewolfs, zombies, vampires etc. then the title alone was sufficient to suck you in. However, if you, like me, were looking for something in the science fiction genre and was surprised to find this so highly rated and furthermore having great reviews by most that read it then I will answer the other question: How can it be?
How can it be that a book that talks about vampires, guns and gore is so highly regarded? How can it be that a book that has a story out of every other book in this genre is so entertaining? How can people like such literature?
Let me tell you something. There is a lot worse out there and this book is actually an oasis among them. The reasons are clear to me and they boil down to this: A cult classic B-rated movie. For those that have seen The Blob or any of the Evil Dead movies this is the feeling you get out of this. Something so bad it is actually good. Let's look at the list.
Monsters out of handbook. Check. Endless beating of main character throughout the book (if you don't like him I would say this is a big plus). Check. Reminding us how awesome he is. Check. Anti-goverment remarks at every chapter (can't wait for a movie to play the drinking game). Check. Classic boy meets girl theme. Check. I can go on and on.
And yet we also see clear writing without straining the language and without taking the reader for a fool. Many different locations and a story that is not boring one bit from start to finish. Entertaining. Good jokes, some I have heard before but the context makes them better. Added bonus - great voice acting by Oliver Wyman.
This is not a masterpiece for sure but I sometimes want something entertaining that I can relax with. This series provides me that pleasure and therefore adds something to the world.

174 of 215 people found this review helpful

Did not meet my expectations, thankfully!

I originally purchased this book when I saw it "on the cheap" on one of Audbiles specials. I had the lowest of expectations just judging from the cover art and the name of the book but as I drive allot and the price was right I figured I would give it a try.
MUCH to my delight this was a fun, action packed and funny as hell book. I ended up well hooked on the series and have now read them all. Larry has a good imagination and a heck of a sick sense of humor, which I can relate to.
Bottom line............Loved it.

112 of 142 people found this review helpful

Entertaining but juvenile

The story was somewhat entertaining but mostly campy, juvenile and underwhelming. Characters and dialogue are very shallow.

17 of 22 people found this review helpful

Enjoyable series

11/2018 Editing my review--I'm now many books into the series and it has improved. I enjoy the team's dynamics and the world they live in is very creative. Just be careful not to get the knock-off fan-fic titles that can be easily mistaken for the originals since the have Larry Correia's name on them as well as the author's

Would you try another book from Larry Correia and/or Oliver Wyman?
I purchased the 2nd book in the series before listening to the first, based solely on Audible ratings. Not sure I would have purchased it if I waited until after listening to the first.

Would you recommend Monster Hunter International to your friends? Why or why not?
I would recommend it to those that have a great interest and knowledge of weaponry...for me the amount of the story spent on describing, in detail, the weapons made my brain tune out.

Any additional comments?
While listening to this title I frequently realized it had become background noise and I wasn't really listening. Sometimes I rewound. Sometimes I didn't rewind and I didn't feel like I missed anything. On the plus side, he characters were engaging and I was very interested in their stories and rooted for their survival.

8 of 10 people found this review helpful

BANG! BANG! fizzle...

What disappointed you about Monster Hunter International?

The concept of MHI isn't new territory, that's fine. A group of mercenaries hunt monsters. It's been done but I can always go back to this sort of thing. The book starts out with a great scene in an office building with our main character being hunted by his Werewolf boss, and this scene is fantastic. It's followed up with another fantastic set piece on an abandoned freighter. From there the action scenes devolve into "then there was lots of gun fire. Then more gunfire. And afterward more gunfire and more gunfire and lots more bullets." They become tedious exercises without a hint of suspense.

The main character could easily be broken up into three or four characters. The secondary characters never get fully developed, mostly existing on the periphery of one dimensional archetypes. Our hero is too perfect; "HE'S A GENIUS! HE'S A PIT FIGHTER! HE'S AN ACCOUNTANT!" The requisite love interest is too obvious, her requisite douchey boyfriend is hated the main character as required by law. The government goons are total goons with nary a shred of basic humanity.

Has Monster Hunter International turned you off from other books in this genre?

I still enjoy books in this style, and perhaps MHI later books are significantly better, after all, this is Correia's first book. It's pretty bad because of that. But the MHI universe has a lot of followers, I can't imagine it's because the stories are universally bad.

Which scene was your favorite?

The action set piece Correia develops on an abandoned freighter is really great, it goes on for a long time and allows several characters to begin to develop; it's a shame those character's developments end there.

What character would you cut from Monster Hunter International?

I would seriously consider cutting every character from this book. Not because they are bad, but because there's too many with too few attributes. The main character is good at everything: guns, math, wrestling, fighting, weight lifting, people, etc. And this character could be broken up into three different characters: an accountant, a fighter, and a gun nut. Instead his abilities get in the way of other characters being able to do anything or contribute to parts of the narrative. The main character is part of a team but solves every problem himself.

Any additional comments?

Monster Hunter International showed some initial promise, but as the story developed, sometimes in a web-like fashion of family politics, it failed to create a real reason to really care about the vast majority of characters. The main character seemed to have intense anger issues; his demise was something I would have taken particular delight in (that doesn't bode well for your protagonist.) The gun porn was fine, even for a non-gun-nut like myself. But as the dozen or so action scenes go on they get less and less interesting. The near invincible vampires became a study in tedium as I read about the thousands of rounds of ammunition being shot at them with no progress made toward their demise. For professional monster hunters they certainly are ill-equipped to kill vampires.

I can see where this sort of thing interests people and, again, maybe the later books are better, Correia shows loads of promise here. His other novels, especially Son of Black Sword, show a matured and nuanced writer this early work barely hints at.

33 of 44 people found this review helpful

Dialogue wanting, but decent narrator

This was a big commitment and with the reviews, I thought it would be solid. The narrator, often sounding like Nick Offerman, I thought I'd give it a try. The story offered a fantasy based typical hero who doesn't know he's a hero, with classic guides, love interests and teams. I often felt, though, like I was listening to a low budget shootem up film dialogue with cliché fighting dialogue. It was entertaining enough to get me through the first one, but I'm not interested in any sequels.

13 of 17 people found this review helpful

So absurd in its hilarity that it was irresistible

I was shopping around for an fun author / narrator combo because nothing on my listening pile appealed to me at the time, and this audiobook was only $1.99 after downloading the free Kindle edition which made the cost vs reward a no-brainer. MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL was clichéd to the max with a hero that was made for the job, a similarly perfect female love interest, and Larry Correia dedicated more pages to describing the weaponry than to developing the characters or the world, but bottom line—I was wildly entertained!

This novel really was ridiculously excessive, so if you want a little more substance with your laughs then I’d suggest you try THE DRESDEN FILES by Jim Butcher instead. The humour is comparable, James Marsters excels as the reader, but the writing isn’t obnoxiously implausible. This story was complete, there were no cliff hangers, and it progressed from Pitt’s first encounter with a monster to him staving off the apocalypse as a full fledged member of MIH which was again a huge leap, yet also in all likelihood because the author didn’t know if this would become a series.

I really enjoyed Owen as a protagonist; he was fearless, a bit of a show-off, and brimming with snark which is a trait that I LOVE, especially when I’ve opted to go the audio route. The blurb describes him as an “average guy” when the only thing commonplace about him was his job, and even that was by design. After being a competitive marksman, bouncer and cage match fighter in his youth his goal was to pick the most boring profession possible, thus a CPA. The romance between him and Julie was also super stereotypical, however it fit in with the rest of the overkill.

Listening to the sample clip of Oliver Wyman was enough to hook me into signing up for 23+ hours. His macho tone was exactly what was needed for this three-hundred-pound lead, and he varied it enough so that it was clear when the first person POV was in internal monologue or external dialogue mode. The cast was fairly large, and Wyman made sure to work the accents to assist readers with keeping everyone straight. Even his female voices were good which is saying something because as a general rule the majority of male narrators struggle in this area.

MONSTER HUNTER INTERNATIONAL was so absurd in its hilarity that it was irresistible.

23 of 31 people found this review helpful

Killin’s my business and business is fine

This audiobook has monsters of impossible, mind-bending proportions. The main villain, the “Cursed One,” is not just a mwahaha villain – we also get inside his head through his memories in Owen’s ghost-guided dream/nightmares that recall C.O.’s journey from a “mean son-of-a-bitch” conquistador to one very megalomaniacal, unearthly, tentacled, flesh-wriggling being who is intent of stopping time itself. I think I’m in love with Owen Z. Pitt, who’s inherently epic, but it’s hard to let the listener know how epic Owen is through first-person narration without it sounding over-the-top or silly. Like when a master vampire tells Owen he has the strongest will of any mortal she’s ever met, or when one guys says to the other that he shouldn’t mess with Owen because he has “one hundred pounds of muscle” on him. Or worse yet, when Julie reads his file and we find out Owen’s a marksman/genius. This book is cliché in the best way possible. It's like 1 part monsterish gore, 1 part comedy, and 1 part all sorts of artillery. It's like Hot Fuzz.

Oliver Wyman is great. This is the first time I heard him read, and his style is perfect for Monster Hunter International. He has a rather macho tone with just a bit of immaturity, and again, the term “epic” comes to mind to describe his style. His reading of female voices didn’t make me burst out laughing, which is what usually happens when I listen to male narrators read girls’ voices. The only thing that jarred me was how seriously Oliver Wyman took those vocal direction. I usually comment on whether narrators do a good or bad job at distinguishing internal monologue with external speak when audiobooks are in first-person, like this one. The listener has no problem with distinguishing the two in Monster Hunter International, because Oliver Wyman reads the directions in a rather calm soft voice, while reading the actual words with the proper emphasis, instead of splitting the two.

95 of 130 people found this review helpful

Ok monster story to pass the time.

This came up as an Audible recommendation because I've listened to a bunch of fantasy and sci-fi books. I would say it was just "ok".
The whole 'giant of a man who's a lovable oaf/teddy bear who can rip your head off/immediately falls in love with the hottest girl in the whole book and acts sheepishly awkward around her at every interaction but isn't afraid of vampires or other monsters' got pretty old pretty fast. I found myself rolling my eyes and sighing out loud in every scene with those two characters. I even made gagging sounds a few times.
The monster action and fight scenes were interesting, but I found the narrator to be at little too melodramatic and slow for my taste.

14 of 19 people found this review helpful

Decent

A fairly simple book, but entertaining nontheless. Ideal for those listening to a book while doing something slightly distracting.

11 of 11 people found this review helpful

They Shoot Monsters, Don't They?

This was a great surprise! It's a really great action / adventure fantasy novel which doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is. Just sit back and listen to the great narration by Oliver Wyman as the adventure washes over you. I know a lot of people out there have issues with Larry Correia's gun lovin' attitudes and obvious political opinions but if you can get over that then you'll really enjoy this book (and the rest in the series). It's fun, it goes bang, it has monsters and then the monsters go bang!

21 of 22 people found this review helpful

Fantastic, the hunt is on!

This is a face paced story, although you need to get over the fact that you will know your guns by the end. The Hero Owen Z Pitt is both funny, humble, arrogant and fantastically violent. The rest of the gang is just brilliant and the banter will keep you giggling, The story has enough complexity to keep your interest and the characters are sufficiently rounded for you to care what happens to them. Urban fantasy at its best!

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Second time of listening

Enjoyed it just as much as the first time if not more.

Like the characters and style of writing.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Loved it!

Loved this book escapism at its best.. story moved with pace.. and what a narrator!! Fantastic! .. he had each voice and accents perfect , you could clearly distinguish the many characters..his narrative of chapter 22 was so good I felt I was there in that dark damp swamp in the heat of the battle. .. it didn't get the full 5 stars only because the authors obvious love of guns did get a bit tiresome but that's the only minus point... at over 20 hours it in no way felt like it! Highly recommend!

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Hmm, interesting!

A good story, densely plotted, and a great reading by Oliver Wyman makes for an enthralling listen. So why only three stars? Well, partly because I think the book could have done with some stricter editing. It's a long, long journey with a number of diversions which, though entertaining, would have improved the pace of the book by their absence.
But the main reason for my docking two stars from my review is the barely hidden subtext. Anyone with any understanding of the last decade will spot the right-wing, redneck militia-leaning protagonists. For 'monsters' read 'terrorists' and for 'Monster Hunter International' read 'Anti Government vigilante militias' who operate on the basis that 'my gun is bigger than yours'. It was as if the author was channeling the spirits of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as he wrote.
I realise that for many this aspect is probably an attractive and positive part of the story, but it left me feeling slightly uncomfortable while enjoying the mayhem. It is possible to write exciting monster hunting and supernatural mayhem books. I need only mention Jim Butcher and early Laurell K Hamilton as prime examples of politically neutral masters of the genre.

Having said all that, I'll still go for the second volume!

22 of 27 people found this review helpful

Full of action

Really enjoyable story, lots of action and of course loads of guns! Very good narration and I eventually even became used to the American accent. Well worthwhile

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

great performance, fun writing

great humour and a fun writing style but I think the characters are a bit over powered.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Made me want to eat my ears

The creepiest thing about this book was the protagonist.

This will probably spoil the book for anyone reading this and about to listen to it, but I imagined the narrator delivering all of his lines like he's looking at an imaginary camera, head tilted slightly forward with one eyebrow raised and saying the word 'Duh-uh-uh!' Over and over again for twenty hours of my life that I'll never get to spend with my family.

If you're from Texas, you'll love it.

8 of 11 people found this review helpful

I think this simply wasn't for me

Having listened to this I think I simply don't like the protagonist. I'm sure the whole macho shoot first think eventually thing will appeal to some but didn't for me. I found myself constantly hoping that something would manage to kill pitt for good which sadly didn't happen.

The unhealthy obsession with guns, barely hidden political views and telegraphing of events to come throughout the book left me disappointed. This was topped off by one of the most inexplicable romance angles I have ever listened to and terrible attempts to build emotion with characters before something dreadful happened to them.

However it's all fine because guns are cool, especially if you are shooting guns and even more so if you are shooting them at something that doesn't require a moral justification on if its right or wrong. I will be sticking with Harry Dresden where good story, character development and well written action blend together into an interesting and gripping read. It's a shame this book lacks any of those.

8 of 11 people found this review helpful