Interesting concept for an alternate world. The main character clearly was shaped by his serially satyristic father, and penultimate liberal causes "uber alles" mother; so what else could he do, he joined the Marines. A miraculous resurrection from a Beirut bombing redirects him to an allied but sort of different vocation as a monster hunter. No surprise, he is good at it. Lively action as virtually every known fantasy monster makes an appearance. ( )

Guns don't kill people. People kill people. People also kill monsters in Correia's epic Monster Hunter International series. This time it's a story written by John Ringo and set a couple decades before the original book.

It's got monsters and guns and explosions, oh and a healthy dose of sex this time around. ( )

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Title: Grunge
Series: Monster Hunter Memoirs #1
Author: John Ringo, Larry Correia
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: SFF
Pages: 320
Format: Kindle digital edition


Synopsis:

Oliver Gardenier, aka Gary Stu, is a boy wonder with some seriously messed up parents. He joins the marines in defiance of his mother and ends up talking to St Peter and given a mission back on Earth: to hunt Monsters. Joining up with Monster Hunters International, Oliver details his adventures.

He also details his seriously messed up theological thoughts on Jesus and God. And just in case you forget, he also states, over and over and over, how successful with women he is.


My Thoughts:

If this had been just an MHI story, it would have been awesome. 4stars easy, pushing 4 1/2.

First thing that pushed it down was Gardenier’s continual references to his womanizing. He justifies it by saying he doesn’t want to leave a widow and orphans behind when he inevitably dies on the job, but that is so much BS. He’s probably leaving a trail of byblows who are growing up without a dad and string of woman who wanted more than a night. Those excuses lead into the second, and bigger, reason.

Theology. Ringo, and he is the author of this book, not Correia, presents sin as something just kind of ‘meh’ and that Jesus is our Dude who tells God to chill out on our behalf. In fact, Ringo/Gardenier states that you have to do something REALLY bad to go to hell now. Ringo threw around enough biblical names, terms, etc that it is obvious he’s at least familiar with Scripture but simply choosing to twist it to allow him to do whatever he wants.

Once past those, like I said, it is a tremendous MHI story. I’ll be reading the next book but with some serious reservations. ( )