MySF Reviews

After saving the world at least three times now, the crew at Monster Hunter International is back in Monster Hunter Legion, the fourth Monster Hunter installment from Larry Correia. We return to the point of view of Owen Zastava Pitt as MHI joins monster hunters from around the world in Las Vegas at the first annual International Conference of Monster Hunting Professionals, an event sponsored by a mysterious benefactor.

After taking a trip to nowhere in northern Nevada and defeating a strange giant spider, Owen goes with Agent Franks of the Monster Control Bureau to an ultra secret section at Dugway in Utah where the nastiest unused supernatural experiments are buried. While there, they visit a bunker which seems to be empty, though they are attacked by something eventually just disappears.

Returning to the Last Dragon Hotel in Las Vegas, various strange events start happening all throughout the hotel, and the MCB locks down the hotel in a quarantine. This leaves all the monster hunters to fight off the strange and deadly attackers within the hotel while only having limited supplies.

Correia takes a common fiction trope—the locked room scenario—and gives it a unique spin while working with protagonists both inside and outside the locked-down hotel. We gain a better understanding of Holly through her visit to the vampire pit where she was held captive. We also get to see Owen’s brother, Mosh, learn to deal with the horrific things done to him in Monster Hunter Vendetta. I love seeing characters learn and grow.

We also see Stark continue down his dark path as it leads toward the story in Monster Hunter Nemesis, while Agent Franks and Agent Myers become a little more sympathetic and relatable. It really is nice to have good character development on both sides of the -tagonist wall, and to see that not all antagonists are total schmucks (most of them, but not all).

The story really kicks into high gear in Monster Hunter Legion, and it’s exciting to see the various parts of the story starting to converge into something only in Correia’s mind at this point. I highly recommend this book, and I’m looking forward to seeing how everything gets tied together.

Release Date: September 4, 2012 (USA)
ISBNs: 1451637969 (9781451637960)
Publisher: Baen Books
Language: English

MySF Rating: Four point zero stars
Family Friendliness: 65%

Content:

Alcohol/Drugs: 1 (Earl is always smoking)
Language: 3 (somewhat regular weak and strong expletives)
Sexuality: 1 (passing mentions of sexiness, some minor innuendo)
Violence: 4 (some brutal and/or graphic descriptions of violence, monster fights, death)