Monster Hunter Vendetta by Larry Correia

ORIGINAL PAPERBACK. Sequel to the Hit Novel, Monster Hunter International. Owen Pitt Never Met a Gun He Didn’t Like, or a Monster He Couldn’t Shoot. But Now, the Monsters are Shooting Back . . . Accountant turned professional monster hunter, Owen Zastava Pitt, managed to stop the nefarious Old One’s invasion plans last year, but as a result made an enemy out of one of the most powerful beings in the universe. Now an evil death cult known as the Church of the Temporary Mortal Condition wants to capture Owen in order to gain the favor of the great Old Ones. The Condition is led by a fanatical necromancer known as the Shadow Man. The government wants to capture the Shadow Man and has assigned the enigmatic Agent Franks to be Owen’s full time bodyguard, which is a polite way of saying that Owen is monster bait. With supernatural assassins targeting his family, a spy in their midst, and horrific beasties lurking around every corner, Owen and the staff of Monster Hunter International don’t need to go hunting, because this time the monsters are hunting them. Fortunately, this bait is armed and very dangerous . . .

Owen pissed off an interdimensional horror, and now all its minions, a murder cult included, want him dead. Their hobbies included bringing utopia through Lovecraftian monsters and creating monsters from pieces of human an animal cadavers.

Not sure why, but I remembered these books having much more gun talk. I have never been around those circles, so I don't understand that kind of lingo (though I support your right to have guns, so I'm not sitting here and saying they should be taken away because I don't understand them, that's just a stupid thing to do), but on my second time reading through, it seems a lot less, oddly. Maybe I just wasn't used to it back then and it was a bit jarring? Since then this became one of my all time favourite series, so I guess that helps.

This one adds a lot to a bunch of character; we get to meet Owen's family, we learn about the history of Agen Myers with MHI and how Agent Franks works. An absolutely hilarious version of gnomes get added to the list of modernised fantasy creatures.
In that sense it was a very successful sequel; same tone, but a very much expanded and deepened world. On my first try, I was a bit worried, though. How could you go on after this? What bigger danger, bigger things can come after THIS? The fact I am excited about book 8 coming tells you that Correia pulls it off. So no worries, he still has a ton of ideas and things to do. We good.

Something about the no nonsense attitude made me get very attached to the characters so fast. Every time someone gets hurt, I feel it. They are crass and loud and rowdy bunch of people and I still love them so much it's almost funny. They have big guns and big heart.
I know some will hate this on principle and sure, that's their right, but it makes me so ridiculously happy to read this again.

In a number of ways these stories remind me of the Harry Desden books. While not totally the same style the way the authors' hand dialog is. Well worth taking a look at.

I like the Monster Hunter books so far - all two of them. They're so action-packed that for three days after finishing Vendetta I was driving down the road pretending to shoot at shredded tire “monsters” along the side of the road, complete with pretend machine gun fire.

Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh (machine gun)
Blam-blam-blam (shotgun)
KABOOM!!! (rocket launcher)

My six year old nephew thinks it's hilarious.

All hail crappy writing! Larry writes complete tripe but its all edge of the seat stuff. Crazy monsters and even more crazy villains. Even the good guys are completely strange. After going through one climax after the other I finally wrapped this one at 3 AM. That deserves 3 stars I guess! Maybe will read the next one on a flight to somewhere:-)