That is one ugly monster. Glad he's not related to me! It is also cards looking like this that kept me from playing black back in the day. If my parents had seen this, they probably would have been like "Nuh uh, you're not playing THAT game any more". I knew this, so I just avoided the whole issue. Who says teens are dumb?
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Title:
Monster Hunter Files
Series: MHI #7
Author:
Larry Correia
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Urban Fantasy
Pages: 300
Words:
117K
Publish: 2017
When
I originally read this back in ‘17, I gave it 4stars. I was hoping
that maybe I could inch this up a halfstar, but sadly, the Jane
Yellowrock story ("She
Bitch, Killer of Kits") still kept that from happening, again.
I just dislike Jane Yellowrock, period. I did skip the John Ringo
story, as it was just a chapter from the final Monster
Hunter Memoirs book
and I’ve since read that trilogy.
When I went to read this, this time, I saw Schmidt’s name on the cover and thought “huh, that name sounds familiar”. Turns out he had compiled and edited a couple of Predator collections that I had read, namely Eyes of the Demon and If It Bleeds. Eyes was just a horrible collection of modern writers who didn’t know diddly squat about the Predators and Schmidt should have been ashamed of himself for allowing such a collection. That is the reason he’s not getting a spot in the “Authors” part of the info block from me this time around. He’s a dink.
And on to the positive.
I think that A Knight of the Enchanted Forest was once again my favorite story. I never thought about dipping pepperoni pizza in ranch dressing before this story and to be honest, while it does sound yummy (in an excess kind of way), I still haven’t worked up the courage to actually try it. Maybe 2025 will be the year! (actually, make that exclamation point a question mark, I’m still not brave enough)
Mr Natural by Jody Nye was the story about a group of hippies who raised a demon that enhanced nature, but at the cost of human sacrifice. That was the story that I talked about shooting hippies and commies and ended up getting in trouble in a group over on Librarything about it. Ahhh, good memories, that’s what that is :-)
"Huffman Strikes Back" was a surprise, in a good way. Of course, it was coauthored by The Dink, so I’m giving ALL the credit to the co-author, Julie Frost. This story was about the brother of the werewolf that Owen Zastava Pitt (the main character in the MHI series) threw out of a skyscraper in the first book. Huffman was just as insane and twisted as his brother. He was also just as petty and small minded. It was good to see him get his!
Another good re-read in the MHI universe and I am happy to report that the series is holding strong. Onward!
★★★★☆
Publishers Blurb and Table of Contents
For well over a century, Monster Hunter International has kept the world safe from supernatural threats small and large—and in some cases very, very large. Now, join us as MHI opens their archives for the first time. From experienced Hunters on their toughest cases, to total newbies' initial encounters with the supernatural, The Monster Hunter Files reveals the secret history of the world's most elite monster fighting force.
Discover what happened when Agent Franks took on the Nazis in World War Two. Uncover how the Vatican’s Combat Exorcists deal with Old Ones in Mexico. And find out exactly what takes place in a turf war between trailer park elves and gnomes. From the most powerful of mystical beings to MHI’s humble janitor, see the world of professional monster hunting like never before.
Introduction by Albert Lee
"Thistle" by Larry Correia
"Small Problems" by Jim Butcher
"Darkness Under the Mountain" by Mike Kupari
"A Knight of the Enchanted Forest" by Jessica Day George
"The Manticore Sanction" by John C. Wright
"The Dead Yard" by Maurice Broaddus
"The Bride" by Brad R. Torgersen
"She Bitch, Killer of Kits" by Faith Hunter
"Mr. Natural" by Jody Lynn Nye
"Sons of the Father" by Quincey J. Allen
"The Troll Factory" by Alex Shvartsman
"Keep Kaiju Weird" by Kim May
"The Gift" by Steve Diamond
"The Case of the Ghastly Spectre" by John Ringo
"Huffman Strikes Back" by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Julie Frost
"Hunter Born" by Sarah A. Hoyt
"Hitler's Dog" by Jonathan Maberry
Afterword
Biographies
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Title:
Evil Ascending
Series: Dark Conspiracy
#2
Author: Michael Stackpole
Rating: 3
of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages:
259
Words: 90K
Publish: 1991
Another
decent story by Stackpole in the Dark Conspiracy rpg gameworld. In
the last book, we followed Tycho Caine as he fought the Darklord
Fiddleback. In this book, we still follow Caine but we also follow an
alien who was created to fight Darklords like Fiddleback as well as a
protege of Caine’s as he hunts down the training school Caine came
from.
This wasn’t anything I’d recommend to you all now, that’s for sure. It wasn’t bad but it didn’t have that pizazz that Stackpole “could” bring to his own projects. It came across for what it was, a writing project to pay the bills for a year or two. Those kinds of books aren’t necessarily bad nor should they be automatically avoided, but I do think their consumption should be limited, just like cheetos.
INSERT CHEETOS.JPG
★★★☆☆
From the Publisher & Bookstooge
In this, the second book of the Fiddleback Trilogy, the war of Dark Lords against humanity expands. Rajani, the daughter of an ET, struggles across a ruined Earth to destroy the Dark Lord Fiddleback.
Fiddleback's former puppet, Tycho Caine, assumes the identity of Coyote and takes on his mission: protecting humanity from the creature that created him. Caine's mission leads him to a Tibetan monastery, where the dimension-walking monks help him discover his true nature.
One of Coyote's aides, Sinclair MacNeal, travels to Tokyo to find the enclave of assassins where Fiddleback forged Caine in a very deadly weapon.
Where these three paths converge, Dark Lords class, and reality bends like heated wax.
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Title:
Samurai
Series: Usagi Yojimbo #2
Author:
Stan Sakai
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Graphic Novel
Pages: 152
Words:
15K
Publish: 1989
After
reading The
Ronin (book 1) last year, and since I’m done with manga (I
stopped Demonslayer
back in May) and the last graphic novel I read was that horrible
Batman/The
Shadow: Murder Geniuses fiasco, I wanted something that I
thought would satisfy me.
Boy, did I choose wrong.
There was absolutely nothing “bad” about this story. Usagi (the rabbit Samurai) recounts the battle that set him on the path of the ronin (a leaderless samurai) and how he dealt with that aspect of his life. It was decent. What dragged this book down for me was the inclusion of a bunch of other stories about other comics that the same publishing company put out alongside Usagi Yojimbo. Each Usagi comic was about 20-22 pages long and then they added 12-15 pages of some other animal related comic to bulk the comic up to the 36 page mark. I ended up skipping those and it really annoyed me. Enough so that I don’t plan on reading any more of Usagi Yojimbo. Just not worth the slog.
And at this point, I think my only comic medium is now going to be Groo.
★★☆☆☆
Synopsis by Bookstooge
Usagi recounts his origins to another wandering Samurai. There are also several non-Usagi Animal stories which were related to other comics put out by the same publishing company.
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Title:
Slow Horses
Series: Slough House #1
Author:
Mick Herron
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre:
Thriller
Pages: 309
Words:
112K
Publish: 2010
Fraggle
recommended this series in the Recommend
Me a Book V post and I think getting to it within seven months is
pretty fast, for me :-)
Slough House is where British secret agents go when they are failures. Now, there are different kinds of failures and so you get a real disparate group of people here. We follow River Cartwright and boy, he IS a failure. Not because of the incident that sent him to Slough House (turns out he was framed) but because he won’t listen to anyone or stop to think through the consequences of what he wants to do. Plus, he just doesn’t listen, literally. There were several times where the author has him “tune out” of a conversation and River goes into his own headspace. I was kind of hoping he would die and make the world a better place.
But River Cartwright isn’t the only character and that is the saving grace of this book. From an obnoxious hacker who nobody likes to the head of Slough House, these people ARE people. They aren’t cliches or stereotypes but actual people and I enjoyed that. The plot about MI5 “solving” a problem it purposely created and having it go off the rails was pretty good.
I was pretty happy with this book and I think I’ll be reading more in the series. That is always a good feeling.
★★★✬☆
From Wikipedia
Slough House is an MI5 office overseen by Jackson Lamb, a crotchety Cold War era agent, where "Slow Horses" (disgraced agents) are relegated to pushing paper and sorting through bins.
Everyone has a reason for being at Slough House. River Cartwright accidentally shut down London King's Cross railway station during a training assessment, a mistake he claimed resulted from being fed false information. Louisa Guy misplaced an arms dealer, Min Harper left confidential information on a train and Roddy Ho for his repulsive personality. Only Sidonie "Sid" Baker, a new agent at Slough House has unknown origins. Baker starts to be given assignments in the field and quickly attracts the envy of other agents. After Baker is tasked with following a disgraced conservative journalist, Robert Hobden, Cartwright does everything he can to get involved.
When Hassan Ahmed, a British-Pakistani university student, is kidnapped and held hostage by the white nationalist group Sons of Albion, the agents of Slough House begin to wonder what they can do to help. The Kidnappers announce they will behead Ahmed on a live stream in 36 hours, rain, hail or shine. What the agents of Slough House don't know is that the terrorists have been infiltrated by a former Slow Horse, Alan Black, who has been secretly tasked by the deputy director of MI5, Diana Taverner, to sabotage the Kidnappers as a publicity stunt for the agency.
Hobden suspects foul play, as he previously overheard Taverner in a bar discussing creating sting operations on far-right political groups. When Hobden begins to make attempts to expose the scheme publicly, Taverner convinces Jed Moody, a discontent Slough House agent with a background in international espionage, to plan an assassination attempt on Hobden. Unbeknownst to Moody, Cartwright and Baker are monitoring Hobden's house the night he attempts a masked break-in. Before noticing the intruder, Baker reveals to Cartwright she was assigned to Slough House to survey him. The pair rush to Hobden's defence. A violent scuffle results in Moody accidentally shooting Baker. Hobden and Moody flee into the night, while River rushes Baker to the hospital.
Realising what he's done, Moody returns to Slough House for supplies in preparation to go on the run. Both Louisa Guy and Min Harper return to work after hours for some private time together and rush to attack the masked intruder. The embroiled Moody and Harper fall down the office stairs, where Moody dies instantly after breaking his neck on impact. After Jackson Lamb is alerted to the death of two of his in one night, he begins to piece together Taverner's meddling in his affairs.
Hobden rushes to the house of Peter Judd, a conservative politician. While Judd is reluctant to help Hobden expose MI5's antics, Hobden threatens to release a compromising photo of a young Judd throwing a Nazi salute.
Meanwhile, the kidnappers have discovered and killed the traitor within their ranks. After they change their plans and take their hostage on the road, Taverner begins to look to hide her involvement. Taverner begins to alert people within MI5 that one of the kidnappers was a former Slow Horse and tries to pin the situation on Jackson Lamb. Lamb decides to break into the MI5 headquarters with Cartwright to find evidence and confront Taverner with proof she is framing the agents of Slough House.
The other Slow Horses work to track down the van the kidnappers had hired. Working through the known aliases of the former Slough House agent who infiltrated the group, the Slow Horses find the booking. Roddy Ho works out how to hack the rental company's navigation system and they alert the police of the forest where the kidnappers have stopped. The two remaining kidnappers in the meantime had begun to argue, disagreeing about actually killing Hassan. Hassan uses the opportunity to escape and hide in the forest before he is saved by the police.
In the days after, it is announced that Robert Hobden died in a hit-and-run accident and Cartwright discovers all records of Sid Baker have been wiped from existence, her status now unknown.
Unlike last week's "Holy Armor", this actually looks "holy" to me. I can practically hear the angelic choirs singing in the background.
Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!2. Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore thee,
Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.
Cherubim and seraphim, falling down before thee,
Who was and is and evermore shall be.3. Holy, Holy, Holy! though the darkness hide thee,
Though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
Only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
Perfect in pow'r, in love, and purity.4. Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth, and sky, and sea;
Holy, holy, holy! merciful and mighty!
God in three Persons, blessed Trinity.
There you go, your weekly dose of hymnary. Bet you didn't expect that :-D
Last year on a dare, I read a Barbara Cartland romance novel and did a Buddy Read with whoever wanted. It was last minute (for me) but it did go ok. Therefore I wanted to do another one but give a longer lead in time so more people could plan to join if they wanted to.
This year, as you can see by the cover above, I will be reading A Rainbow to Heaven. Cartland wrote it in 1934 and is one of her earlier works. It's 12 chapters and approximately 130'ish pages long. I hope to follow the same format as before, ie, three chapters a week in December with an update and then a final review of the book as whole in the first week of January 2026.
Once November hits, I'll do another Announcement post with more specifics. I will include a link here to Devilreads if you would like to check the book out. Devil Reads Will Devour Your Soul!
I enjoyed Love Saves the Day so I hope to be able to enjoy this read as well. If you'd care to read along, maybe you'll enjoy it too :-D
That is one ugly monster. Glad he's not related to me! It is also cards looking like this that kept me from playing black back in...
