Monster Hunter Nemesis

Agent Franks is a dick. You know it, I know it. Everyone does. But Agent Franks would never do bullshit, backstabbing, cowardly things out of selfishness. So when he gets set up to look like he went to destroy the MHB, he needs to do anything he could (and the dude can do many insane things) to prove he is innocent and find out who and why is trying to make him look like he basically betrayed everyone and everything.

It was time to humanise the MHB and Mr. Correia did one hell of a job. Owen and MHI in general doesn't trust the government and at heart, they want to be left alone to do their thing instead of waiting to some asshole to look up in the government issued handbook how to do it according to politicians. Then again, that's pretty much a returning theme in all of this author's books and I can respect that. The government isn't infallible. The procedure isn't always perfect and I'm really against the idea that any one of us can become the loss that's calculated as acceptable when the rules are made.
When dealing with a huge volume of human beings, you can not just completely ignore that, the human factor. How we are awkward, clumsy creatures who don't always make the best decision. Who will act batshit insane or just criminally stupid sometimes. Who will be unpredictable.

Here comes Agent Franks, though. He isn't human. He can't understand things like getting emotional over a case, having biases or acting in a surprising way. He comes, he fights, he closes the case and he leaves.
But then what will happen when the enemy is not working according to any moral code and even uses creatures that are very familiar to Franks?

When the series started, we were told the MHB is one block of government funded assholes. Sure, we have seen some of them being human, some hints here and there as time went on, but at the same time it was rare to see them interact with each other without it being filtered though the eyes of Owen and Co. Here a bunch of them do exactly that. They apparently have Christmas parties with Secret Santa, they bitch about their assignments. Many of them are actually unhappy about many of the things they have to do to the survivors. Archer and Grant are downright funny.

It was interesting to see how Franks was basically forced to compromise; he realised that to fulfill his big goal of protecting humanity, he needed to do things he found distasteful and deal with people he finds weak. Then again, everyone is weak to him.
I will go there; sometimes Franks was downright charming with how he is totally inhuman and just does his best. Yes, yes, he is not a good person, but he is kind of... not even a person. His past was interesting too.

This one fleshed out a lot of things about the world. If you think the Non-Owen-Centric books are not essential, think again. They are an absolute joy every time.