How to Czech Monster Hunting

Larry Correia’s Monster Hunter series is highly popular among Czech Republic fantasy readers. This is a nation where splatterpunk is big, so Monster Hunter’s appeal is obvious. After a Monster Hunter anthology appeared in 2020, Correia’s Czech writers wanted in on the game. Especially authors who wrote Czech versions of urban fantasy and splatterpunk.

Monster Hunter Fantom, written and edited by Martin Fajkus and Jakub Mařík, is the result. It is a series of tales set in the Monster Hunter universe, which take place in or around the Czech Republic.

They are rooted in the myths, legends, and folklore of Czechia. Except for the opening story, authored by Larry Correia, they are all written by Czech authors. Despite its small size, Czechia has had a big literary tradition that continues today. The collection contains eleven stories by different authors, each with a different style but unifying threads.

In each story Fantom members appear. Fantom is the Czech counterpart to Monster Hunter International, Owen Pitt’s company. It appeared in Correia’s novel Monster Hunter Siege. Correia’s Czech fans adopted it as their home team. Fantom is explained as having a centuries-old tradition of monster hunting, dating to the Austrian Empire.

Additionally the US Monster Control Board has a Czech governmental counterpart, the State Regulatory Service. As with the MCB, the SRS resents the free-lance private sector monster hunters. In part, this is because the private sector hunters get paid better and in part because the private sector does a better job of monster hunting. The result is, just as with the MCB, the SRS are frequently the heavies in the story. Sometimes they verge on being worse than the monsters being hunted.

The ten stories written by Czech authors are of high quality. They are different than the stories written by Correia or his American collaborators. They are very much rooted in the Old World. The monsters faced are those native to Czech or Eastern European mythology and legend. The bureaucrats they fight also have a European Union feel. The settings seem more compact.

The stories are also darker than those written by Correia or American collaborators. They have a grittier feel. This may be a reflection of Czech splatterpunk or simply European attitudes, which are less optimistic than those of the New World. For fans of the Monster Hunter series, Monster Hunter Fantom offers first-rate entertainment with an Old World twist.

“Monster Hunter Fantom,” written and edited by Martin Fajkus and Jakub Mařík, Baen,February 2025, 448 pages, $18.00 (paperback), $6.99 (E-book)

This review was written by Mark Lardas, who writes at Ricochet as Seawriter. Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City, TX. His website is marklardas.com.