Monster Hunter Memoirs: Sinners

It's a fun ride, but little in the way of a beginning, middle, and end. This book is all middle. It pretty much goes "monster, kill it, monster, kill it, monster, kill it" until it abruptly stops and you're left asking "and then what?" and "why?" As much fun as fighting monsters with an uzi may be, I would have appreciated a sense that the larger plot was moving forward in some way.

John Ringo's military fiction just adds more ridiculous action to Larry Correia's already action packed fantasy universe, and his distinctive descriptions of varying types of relationships brings more depth to some of Larry's characters, the history or MHI and some very odd parts of the US that Larry has not touched on. The middle book of a trilogy, its not as happy go lucky as the first, and sets up the third, but is well worth the read in its own right. Now I just have to wait for Saints to come out.....

Sinners is a very short book and feels incomplete. There is something happening in New Orleans that is causing lots of monsters and more powerful dark magic. Chad is being run ragged attempting to keep the monster outbreak checked. But matters continue to get worse. There is a big battle and the book abruptly ends. What is causing the outbreak is left hanging.

Still, there are a lot of fun moments. The action is nonstop. But I enjoyed this book much less than the previous offering which was much better developed.

Rather abruptly, and it seemed forced.

What was the point of the opening cliffhanger, when the resolve to that was someone else save him, then he kills them.

It was really good and well worth the read (not as good as the first), but it seemed that the authors painted themselves into some corners trying to build the tension.

The opening cliffhanger didn't to be there.

This is easily the worst book of the MHI universe, and one that seems to be steadily declining in quality since Correia started multiple series and farming out his universe to other authors. I enjoyed book one of this new character arc and had high hopes for this one, but the second in the series is nothing more than a set-up for the next novel, whenever that's due.

In addition to having no resolution and minimal plot (The main character just kills a bunch of stuff and collects money, levels up with a house, butler and random groupies, ugh. This guy is supposed to be sent from heaven lol?) the characterization and tension is all but absent here. We are introduced to a whole new set of characters, the MHI New Orleans franchise, who are just awful cutouts of louisiana or military/LE culture. There's a cynical cop guy, a bunch of corrupt officials, a cajun girl who will cook and eat anything with her numerous cousins, etc... We don't really care about any of these new people, because they're so blatantly two dimensional and are introduced to basically to be killed off around the protagonist so he can look even more badass and survivor-ish. So much for the new crew!

The main character himself goes through no changes throughout the book, getting dinged up in one fight, patched up and on to the next set-piece-fight. this happens about 5-6 times, each time with a few more werewolves, vampires or what-have-you until the book simply ends with the protagonist being told that the big showdown is coming soon, and that's it. Oh and half the fights are just idiotic in their attempts to make them "local" flavored. So yeah, zombies, priestesses, the guy from Live and Let Die, monster frogs, giant crawfish... you get the idea, and the idea is dumb.

In addition the normal tension between the MHI and the federal law enforcement, and the mission to keep the supernatural under wraps from the public is completely gone now, hand-waved away with the notion that since this is New Orleans, everyone is just ok with all this stuff going down in public, hundreds of dead civilians and monsters in a few weeks and no one raises an eyebrow. It just sucks the wind out of the series, as if Star Trek just chucked the Prime Directive in mid season and never looked back. It means that Ringo and Correia can ignore all those intricate situations and tensions and write straight military fiction vs monsters. And it turns out, that's enough to make an incredibly boring read that you never get invested in.

John Ringo's second book in the Monster Hunter Momoirs: Sinners, is both better and worse than Grunge.

Our hero from the last book, Chad, is continuing his mission to be a Monster Hunting killing machine. Due to circumstances beyond his control, he has to leave Seattle, his home base in Grunge. After complaining -- a lot -- about never wanting to be in the heat ever again, MHI headquarters has the perfect gig for him: New Orleans. The Big Easy has got a lot of problems, and it needs all the help it can get.

Sinners does a great job of capturing the flavor of New Orleans, especially when you consider that standard policy can boil down to "Don't scare the tourists." Every local either believes in the dark arts, or practices the dark arts. Of course, we have at least one team member who really wants to turn every other beastie into jambalaya, shootouts in cities of the dead, and one massive shootout at marti gras.

Oh, yes, and for the record, Mr. Ringo, I saw what you did there with those chapter titles.

Another thing Ringo did better here than in Grunge is build an emotional connection to his teammates. At the end of Grunge, one of Chad's teammates dies. We were supposed to feel the emotional impact of the character death. I didn't then. Here? Oh yes. Characters were much better established, and for the most part, when characters died, I felt it.

Critics of Grunge will be happy to know that Chad spends less time getting lucky and more time being pummeled. There is even less sex in this book than in Grunge, and seriously, people, he spent more time on politics than sex. And for some reason, people claimed he was a Mary Sue .... to which I will soon reply with a blog post explaining what a Mary Sue looks like, because obviously, people have little to no experience with the phenomenon. Yes, he's a super genius who's good at shooting people, but he's also hospitalized every few chapters.

The only thing that's really off-putting about this novel is the marked shift from "looking backwards." In Grunge, there is a lot of time spend on his family, and Ringo outright states that the larger evil behind everything Chad is fighting is Chad's brother. This book? Nope. Barely a whisper of Chad's family, and not a whisper about what's the ultimate evil of the trilogy. I'm wondering how much of that is editorial, or how much was in the process of the novel. These books are thinner than Ringo's usual fair, so if you told me he wrote them as one continuous novel, broken up into a trilogy, that would explain certain things.

Also, in Grunge, time was spent on the moral of the story: "Chad" wrote each chapter to illustrate a point. Here, there's no such clear lesson plan; "Chad" does have "pro-tips" scattered throughout, but the concept seems strangely abandoned. Perhaps this is due to the chaotic nature of New Orleans, where every night is insane, and the full moon is like Arkham asylum let everyone out on a day pass, so Chad is merely fitting in tips where he can.

Heh, it's a coin toss.

Final verdict is still the same: Sinners is even better than Grunge. Go out, buy it, enjoy it

Okay, right off the bat: this isn't written by Larry Correia, although I don't doubt he gave direction on it. Also, yes, Chad is an annoying douchebag, and the stories and some-such surrounding him sound VERY exaggerated. Of course, that's how one would expect an annoying douchebag to describe things -- exaggeratedly, and as self-serving as possible. And I do think that John Ringo nailed that in this book.

So why only 4 stars? Well, despite being fun as hell to read, it's fairly shallow compared to other books in the MHI universe (esp. Correia's mainline novels), and the constant "pro-tips" and solo hunts (despite being very characteristic of "that guy") hold it back from being truly a ride. It is believable to have a main character that acts the way he does -- booze, women, and shooting monsters -- but when that's ALL there is to it... the welcome wears out very quickly. There's just too much coincidences to swallow.

I'd still recommend this for anyone who loves reading the main MHI books, but just know that it comes with a caveat of being a different kind of perspective and writing style. It's not spectacular, but very much worth reading if you aren't put off by the writing style.

I was so disappointed there wasn't a kindle release for this book, I stopped off at a local book store and picked up a copy. I read most of it sitting in the adjecent coffee shop, sipping hot cholcate (tis the season and all that) while listening to my "Angry Irish" playlist. Its a quick and engaging read. It moved fast enough I didn't want to put it down, and engaging enough that I didn't really notice all the background traffic and noise of other customers.

Larry Correia can write and edit. John Ringo can write, and I assume edit. The question raised by book two of Memoirs is can Ringo continue to write in Correia's world...

Edited to add: A word about the ending. Yes, it is abrupt. Yes, it feels like things are unresolved. For anyone who's read Ringo's recent works, this is no surprise. The Black Tide Rising followed the same format. The logic is, both of these series are journals, retelling of actual events. And life is messy. It doesn't line up neatly into three acts.

Spoiler alert, the answer is mostly yes. Ringo's strength is in his action writing. He writes "violence" really well. As a result this book (much like the first one) isn't as rompy as Correia's other Monster Hunter books, its more intense and a bit darker. Where Ringo tends to be weak, characterization, is one of Correia's strengths, and you can see Correia's influence on the characters. This is generally a good thing, but at times it gets distracting. I could pick out entire paragraphs where the writing style changed drastically and suddenly (mid-page), only to
revert a couple of lines later.

That contributes to the lack of a fifth star, but the real "downer" for me is that it didn't really feel like a MHI novel. It felt more like a character from Ringo's "Paladin of Shadows" found himself in the MHI world. Replace monsters with terrorists/bad buys, and well, it would have still worked as a book.