I really, really, really enjoyed Monster Hunter International! It's all about good guys locked in nasty blood-baths with very bad monsters. There are enough guns, gore, and action in here to satisfy those of us who do have a bit of a fighter side. It's ridiculous B-horror movie-like fun, it's full of deus ex machina resolutions to unhappy circumstances, and it's the perfect antidote to the trend of romanticizing vampires and other undead creatures. There is enough (gory) action to thoroughly delight people who like that kind of thing.The book isn't only ridiculous gory battle, though. The character development in Monster Hunter International is splendidly done. Every character is fully realized, and Larry Correia did a great job of really making me care about the characters readers were supposed to care about. The relationships that he crafted between the characters were forged in battle, and as a result, the bonds between the characters were all strong and important. The book is long (my copy was 713 pages), but that's because the author created a story that is full of detail, and he took the time to build the world, the characters, and the story arc, and I think that care really shows in this work.
There were only two things that mildly bugged me about this book. First of all, it's packed with talk of guns. This isn't a social or ethical thing (heck, my profile photo shows my great grandmother packing heat, for goodness sake), it's just that I have no idea what the characters were talking about when they were oohing and ahhing over the various features of various weapons. For me all of that talk got a little "blah, blah, blah," at times, but ultimately, this wasn't really a huge problem. The story did make it very clear that the salient point in all of this gun talk was that the weapons made big booms and did lots of damage to really bad monsters. There. That's all one really needs to understand about the guns.
The second thing that seemed a little "off" for me was how quickly Julie switched her affections from one man to the next. I think that it only made sense that she would have changed her mind, but the rapidity of the switch didn't seem... I don't know... authentic, I guess. In fact, it left me wondering if the author wanted to present Julie as someone the reader was supposed to question the trustworthiness of.
Overall, Monster Hunter International was a really fun monster killing book with high gore, high character development, and lots of funny parts, too. Not high literature, but certainly high fun, and I am looking forward to the next book in this series.