Sunday, June 7, 2015

Book Review: "Dave vs The Monsters: Ascendance" by John Birmingham


For fans of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne comes an exhilarating new urban fantasy series featuring monster-slayer Dave Hooper and his magical splitting maul.
 
Kids, there are no monsters under the bed. They're in the front yard.
 
As a hardworking monster-slayer, Dave Hooper tries not to bring his work home with him. But nowadays it's hard to keep them separate. Email, cellphones, empath daemons, they never let a guy rest.
 
The Horde has been raising hell and leveling cities from New York to Los Angeles, keeping Dave and his fellow monster-killer, Russian spy Karin Varatschevsky, very busy. But when the legions of hell invade the small seaside town his boys call home, Dave has to make a call. Save the world? Or save his family?
 
Not as easy a choice as you'd think, since Dave's ex-wife expects to be saved too. And there's no convincing her that the supersexy Russian spy isn't his girlfriend. She's just his sidekick—and an assassin. - from Netgalley.com

I received this ARC for free from the publisher, Random House Publishing Group - Del Rey Spectra, through NetGalley.com in exchange for a review.

Dave Hooper, Monster Slayer and otherwise bad-ass, is back in his third book of demons coming out to take over the world. The demon attacks have become more abundant, and there is only the one man, Dave, to do it all ... or is there? The Russian spy, Karen, we met in the last book, we have found out is just as powerful as Dave, so maybe there are more? Dave heads back to NY to help protect his ex-wife and sons from the demons. I am sure you can imagine some of the issues going on there!

Character development was fine. Dave seems to get what I think we all would call a more appropriate conscience, well ... a little. It does seem to be getting a bit repetitious with all the demon killing, and only he knows how to talk to them. Though, new characters introduced will obviously have skill sets to help spread out the need to rely so heavy on Dave. Book ended with the day being saved, or at least Dave's family, and leaves an opening for more books to come. I don't know if I would so much recommend this to a more YA crowd due to language and some situations. Would continue reading the series just to find out how it all ends.

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