Monster Hunter International [Unabridged] [Audible Audio Edition]
by Larry Correia (Author), Oliver Wyman (Narrator)
Imagine every one of your favorite action movies ever combined into the best bedtime story ever, told to you as an excited child by the best storyteller dad ever and you’ll get a fairly good idea of what it’s like to listen to Oliver Wyman narrate Larry Correia’s “Monster Hunter International.”
Gorilla sized prize fighter, sharp shooter, and genius Owen Pit has a destiny, a destiny he is failing to fulfill by working late hours in an accounting department with a shit for brains middle-management slug of a boss who treats everyone poorly and acts like a tool. Thankfully destiny is the kind of thing that will come to you, especially if you’re the protagonist in a fantasy book; and brutally killing your werewolf boss in hand to hand combat opens a lot of doors for a young accountant when Monster Hunter International is on the scene.
Me listening to this book is the result of yet another one of Audible’s seemingly unending (thankfully unending) special sales. This one was for series starting books. If it wasn’t for this sale, I probably would have gone my whole life without this book, and that would have been a God damned shame. Because this book is two things I have grown to greatly appreciate in audiobooks. First, it is extremely well narrated. Second, it is 23 hours long and only costs 1 credit. Because of the audible sale, I paid real money for it (about $5), but I intend to buy books 2 and 3 with my audible credits. That gets me 20 and 18 respective hours of entertainment for the same price I pay for other books that are only 9 or 10 hours long.
I’m not saying that the hours to credits ratio is the main selling point, just that it’s a pretty bow on an already well wrapped package, if you know what I mean. Let’s put it this way: I don’t know if Larry Correia writes “BOOM!” when the hero Owen Pit shoots his gun, or if Oliver Wyman just gets excited and yells “BOOM!” but I don’t give a shit, because I love to hear a grown man say “Boom!” Especially Oliver Wyman.
The voice on this guy is amazing! There’s a reason Wyman has won fourteen Earphone Awards, five Audie Awards, two Listen Up Awards and narrated over 150 audiobooks. Other narrators I’ve listened to have about 3 unique character voices for the main character, their BFF and their love interest, and they tend to make every foreigner a Russian. Wyman had a unique character voice and tone for every one of the extensive cast that populate the Monster Hunter world. I was enrapt from first word to last. I’ve even created a new list of books I want based solely on the fact that Oliver Wyman has narrated them.
This book is packed with fun, and specially made for people who love guns. I’m not really interested in firearms, so some of the dick-hard descriptions of different guns and custom mods went completely over my head. Thankfully, the descriptions of guns was well and properly balanced with the shooting of guns, which I rather do enjoy.
If you have trouble with willful suspension of disbelief, this book is not for you. Not only does it have every single 80’s action movie cliche I ever heard of, but there are some I never even imagined before. I ate it up, and because there’s 23 awesome hours of it, I could listen and listen and there was still more to listen to! If you are the kind of person who clapped their hands and smiled like a hungry baby at feeding time whenever Mel Gibson took off running after a car traveling full speed down the freeway in a Lethal Weapon movie, this is your book and it’s calling your name. Don’t deny it. Embrace it. Be who you are, this is your destiny.