Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Emergence | 2014 | John Birmingham | Buy |
| 2 | Resistance | 2015 | John Birmingham | Buy |
| 3 | Ascendance | 2015 | John Birmingham | Buy |
| 4 | Soul Full of Guns | 2016 | John Birmingham | Buy |
| 5 | A Protocol for Monsters | 2016 | John Birmingham | Buy |
| 6 | The Demons of Butte Crack County | 2017 | John Birmingham | Buy |
Dave Hooper is not a hero. He is an overweight, divorced oil rig supervisor nursing a hangover when creatures from beneath the earth tear through his drilling platform. The monsters are part of an ancient civilization that has lived underground for thousands of years, and they are invading the surface. Dave kills one of the lead creatures with a splitting maul and absorbs its energy, gaining superhuman abilities in the process.
The series follows Dave as he reluctantly becomes the only person capable of fighting the monsters on equal terms. He is faster, stronger, and harder to kill than any normal human, but he is still the same selfish, womanizing, fast-food-eating guy he was before. Birmingham plays the premise for both action and comedy, putting a deeply flawed main character at the center of what would normally be a straight monster-invasion story.
The three core novels deal with the initial emergence, the military response, and the escalating war between humans and the underground creatures. The follow-up novellas expand the story with additional encounters and complications. The tone is closer to a big-budget action movie than Birmingham’s more serious military fiction, with plenty of violence, one-liners, and pop culture references.