#Titanuary ‘Dave Vs The Monsters’ by John Birmingham

About the book…

For fans of Jim Butcher and Kevin Hearne comes an action-packed new urban fantasy series featuring a tough, bleakly funny, down-on-his luck oil rig worker with an unlikely destiny as a monster-slayer and savior of the planet.

“Monsters,” said Vince Martinelli. “There are monsters on the rig, Dave.”

Dave Hooper has a hangover from hell, a horrible ex-wife, and the fangs of the IRS deep in his side. The last thing he needs is an explosion at work. A real explosion. On his off-shore oil rig.

But this is no accident, and despite the news reports, Dave knows that terrorists aren’t to blame. He knows because he killed one of the things responsible.

When he wakes up in a hospital bed guarded by Navy SEALs, he realizes this is more than just a bad acid trip. Yeah, Dave’s had a few. This trip is way weirder.

Killing a seven-foot-tall, tattooed demon has transformed the overweight, balding safety manager into something else entirely. A foul-mouthed, beer-loving monster slayer, and humanity’s least worthy Champion.

‘Dave Vs The Monsters’ is the first in the Dave trilogy by John Birmingham, published by Titan in 2015, and currently available on Kindle Unlimited, or paperback.

The first in the ‘Dave vs…’ this is a scene setting novel full of body horror, ripped of limbs, people being eaten like popsicles and multiple descriptions of boners. If any of that does not appeal, then hey, you have been warned!
This is the first book I have read by this author, and whilst I can see why this has been compared to Dresden, it’s an unfair linking as Dave is a unrelenting douchebag, he freely admits it, and when the reader first meets him he has blown a 6 month bonus on flying 2 prostitutes in from Nevada for a good time. Nice.

Meanwhile, his soon to be ex wife is dating her divorce lawyer who is squeezing him for every penny he has and the existence of his two boys raises a rare passing mention. This is a man with HUGE daddy issues, he even acknowledges it himself when he uses sexist, occasionally racist terms and mentally berates himself for spending a lifetime trying to kick the habits he has picked up from his father.

So, back to the story, and Dave is flying out to his oil rig off the coast of New Orleans where he is about to embark on the deepest drilling he and his crew have ever done. Alarm bells were ringing about the whys and wherefores even before he and pilot J2 (one of the few women in the book) see that the rig is on fire. And all they can hear and see are the screams and death rattles of a crew which Dave has personally trained to be scared of nothing.

Arriving to complete carnage, he finds orc-like monsters chowing down on his friends,alarm and fear turning inbto anger when he sees the biggest of them eating his best bud, Marty. Marty always carried a splitting maul with him and in his anger, Dave picks up the maul and kills the hell out of this thing from the deep.

Next thing he knows, he is waking in a hospital with an insatiable hunger, and, it quickly becomes apparent, a superhuman strength.Oh and a full, encyclopaedic knowledge of what these things were, where they came from and what they are after.

This legion of Hunn, Fangr and Grymm have been locked away beneath the water by the ‘Sky Lords’ and view humans as cattle -they get literally steaming drunk on our blood-and the drilling has given them an opening to raid the world. An enterprising Hunn looking to impress the Emperor and get into her good books takes a legion onto the rig. And all hell breaks loose…

As the fever pitch escalates following what is the book equivalent of montage clip of Dave training with the Navy Seals, including a cute female who inspires the afore mentioned boners, war is declared on the streets of New Orleans. Civilians are caught between the horde, the Navy as chaos descends in the book’s finale which as, balls to the wall splatterfest.

It’s not a bad book, I did like it but it is hard to read a book where the main character bangs on about how unlikeable and what a dickhead he is-yes we heard you already now shhh…-and calls his maul ‘Lucille’, as well as bad guys named Sliveen. It kind of feels derivative in a way, it’s definitely a series I would like to complete for the satisfaction of -hopefully-having a firm end to it, but I wouldn’t be bumping things in my TBR to make room for the Dave books. I think I will stick with Dresden for the time being, but Dave will cross my radar at some point I am sure.

About the author…

John Birmingham grew up in Ipswich, Queensland and was educated at St Edmunds Christian Brother’s College in Ipswich and the University of Queensland in Brisbane. His only stint of full time employment was as a researcher at the Defence Department. After this he returned to Queensland to study law but he did not complete his legal studies, choosing instead to pursue a career as a writer. He currently lives in Brisbane.

While a law student he was one of the last people arrested under the state’s Anti Street March legislation. Birmingham was convicted of displaying a sheet of paper with the words ‘Free Speech’ written on it in very small type. The local newspaper carried a photograph of him being frogmarched off to a waiting police paddy wagon.

Links-http://www.cheeseburgergothic.com/

Twitter@TitanBooks @JohnBirmingham