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Blood, Sweat, & Tears: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 5 (SERIES) by John G. Hartness
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for BLOOD, SWEAT, & TEARS
Bubba’s back from Fairyland, and sometimes it feels like they shoulda just stayed there!
Man, coming back to the real world sucks. Bubba and his whole team have been fired on account of going MIA for a year and a half (yeah, time moves differently in Faerie. Yay.), and now they’ve got to…get jobs? Oh, this is going to go well.
Blood, Sweat, & Tears tracks Bubba, Skeeter, Uncle Father Joe, and Amy as they re-enter society, get new jobs, almost burn down down the bar stupid enough to hire Bubba, end up owning a shifter crossfit gym, travel to Florida to learn way more about Uncle Father Joe’s new girlfriend than they ever thought they wanted to know, and then end up dealing with Quincy F’n Harker?!?
Yeah, that’s right. The Quincy Harker/Bubba crossover that you’ve all been waiting for happens right here, and the results are explosive, to say the least. No really, I’m not exaggerating. A lot of shit blows up. Because, well, Bubba.
MY REVIEW for BLOOD, SWEAT, & TEARS
Blood, Sweat, & Tears: Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 5 collects four novellas into one volume and hits a story out of the ballpark.
Born to be Wild – the perfect reintroduction of the cast after the year among the fairies. Gets our favorite redneck and his friends back on the saddle of doing what they do best – being in bars and blowing things up … sometimes both at the same time.
Swamp Music – another blast from the past where Father Joe’s girlfriend reaches out for help and Bubba delivers.
Houses of the Holy – Hartness writes two strong series which he said were placed in the same universe. Fans wanted a crossover – so Bubba goes to the Queen City. It’s not often Bubba is the backup team, but to stop an apocalyptic level spell he’s all for letting the wizard taking the lead. He’ll just sit back and guard a sword in a church. How hard can that be?
Blaze of Glory – Takes everything up a notch. Mr Card – sometimes known as Dracula – has gone off the reservation. One of the people the vampire cared deeply about died, and monster that he is, he normally doesn’t react well when that happens. For most beings, that might be a drinking spree — and for someone once called Vlad, a drinking spree has a very different connotation. Can Bubba find him in time? Or will something else find Bubba and his team first?
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BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for BORN TO BE WILD
He lost his job because he’s not exactly human. His girlfriend got fired just for dating him. His best friend…well, Skeeter’s okay, actually. It ain’t like this is a country song or anything.
Bubba the Monster Hunter is back from Fairyland and trying to figure out how he fits into the normal(ish) world again. He’s got a job as a bouncer at the Don’t Drop Inn, but that all goes up in smoke (way too literally) when his newest case comes waltzing in the front door with a mini zombie apocalypse in tow!
Bubba has to save a vampire from zombies and figure out who wants to make Caufield Evers Oglethorpe IV dead. Again. That investigation will involve magic, werewolves, rogue government agents, subcutaneous tracking devices, and crossfit. Just another day in the life of Bubba the unemployed Monster Hunter!
MY REVIEW for BORN TO BE WILD
4/21/2019 First Readthrough – At last, Season Five begins and we see Bubba back in his element.
Friends – including Skeeter’s high pitch voice in his ear!
Starting the story at a Bar!
Beating on people for fun and profit, killing bad things with high explosives, and deciding some bad guys just need talking to (after slugging a couple times).
Humor and wild tangents.
Taking his girl out to lunch and then visiting a necromancer for dessert.
Classic Bubba. I’ve missed you. Like fire ants in the Spring, makes me want to shout “Come and get some”.
2/27/2022 Second readthrough
Season five is complete and I carved out time to read it. This book is the perfect setup to the four novella series – reintroducing the characters, establishing their styles and methods, human and horror, blowing things up. The perfect beginning.
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BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for SWAMP MUSIC
Bubba’s facing off against the most fearsome creature in history – Florida Man!
Well, not really. But kinda. Bubba’s hitting the road to to help a friend when Uncle Father Joe calls for aid. Bubba rolls into Orlando to help out the defrocked priest and his scientist/were-gator girlfriend, and ends up stumbling into something much bigger than even that giant lizard’s cloaca! Somebody’s hunting cryptids, and it ain’t him, so he needs to find out what’s going on back in them swamps, and why suddenly everybody is named Director Shaw?!?
Bubba will battle foes both human and cryptid, and some a little of both in this hilarious horror comedy novella. Season Five of Bubba the Monster Hunter continues with Swamp Music!
MY REVIEW for SWAMP MUSIC
This novella published in May 2020 – and is the perfect homage to the first half of the COVID, while still ALSO being the perfect Bubba book for crazy no-shit mayhem, while still ALSO being a continuation of character building and story progression of the overall story for the Bubba universe in the fifth season.
Born to Be Wild reestablished our hero and his team back on earth – reminding us what Southern Region Monster Hunting looks like. It was fun and lively, but not so deep on the characters.
Swamp Music picks up the action a pace, gives us additional depth and history of this long-running series when Father Joe needs help when his girlfriend’s cousin gets kidnapped. Now that he is an ex-priest … what is gonna happen with GF if the rescue is successful.
And that depends on Bubba dealing with a bunch of Florida weirdness including animal theme parks, were-gators, and keeping an eye on Geri who may still be itching to do a killin’.
Pitch perfect Bubba story. This is why we read Bubba stuff.
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BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for HOUSES OF THE HOLY
The long-anticipated Bubba/Quincy Harker crossover starts here!
Bubba is hired by the Department of Homeland Security to guard some relics in Charlotte, but there’s more going on than there seems. Doesn’t DHS have Quincy Harker, a mostly capable wizard type, right there in Charlotte? And Isn’t Bubba blacklisted from working for the government after DEMON decided they wanted to kill him? And didn’t he smear vampire guts all over College Street that last time he was in Charlotte?
Find out all this, and learn more about the nefarious Director Shaw’s plans for DEMON and world domination as Bubba the Monster Hunter meets up with members of Quincy Harker’s crew to stop the ultimate evil from going down in the Queen City!
Events in Houses of the Holy take place simultaneously with the Quincy Harker novel Conspiracy Theory.
MY REVIEW for HOUSES OF THE HOLY
The third novella of Bubba’s fifth season starts the core of the season’s story. In Born to be Wild and Swamp Music, Bubba was a little out of shape … okay, a lot out of shape. But he now owns a cross-fit gym so he started working out a bit and getting down to a fighting weight (if when you are “down” and still over 300 pounds can be counted as such – when you are over six and a half, it can). And good thing too.
Because Mr. Hartness, the author, did a fan service thing and had his two favorite characters meet. Quincy and Bubba in the same room.
Bubba is called to the Queen City (Charlotte, NC) from his Georgia stomping grounds to operate as the backup team during a little bit of apocalypse.
Normally Bubba is the “A” team, but he is okay to let this slide. Demons and spells and ending the world is more a Quincy thing. He and his team are happy to take the government paycheck … and sweet, sweet equipment.
Of course, being Bubba, he manages to get himself banned from a bar the first day. Next assignment has him guarding a sword inside a cathedral. Hope his day gets better – or EVERYONE’S day is going to get a lot worse.
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BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON for BLAZE OF GLORY
The stunning conclusion to Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 5 is here!
Bubba and the team have been called to Charlotte to help the Department of Homeland Security on a job. Since being in North Carolina, Bubba has been tased, kidnapped, beaten silly, and met DEMON agents, actual demons, and an angel. Now he’s been hired to hunt down the literal most famous monster in history – Count Dracula.
Only problem is, Dracula’s nephew, the wizard Quincy Harker, doesn’t like the idea of Bubba hunting his family in his city.
Will Bubba and Harker finally throw down? Will Bubba get kidnapped and beaten up again? Will the be explosions?
That last one was a trick question. Of course there will be explosions! Get your hands on the thrilling conclusion to Bubba the Monster Hunter Season 5, because this one changes things forever!
MY REVIEW for BLAZE OF GLORY
Fourth and final novella of the fifth season of Bubba. This story overlaps with Mr. Hartness’ Quincy Hartness series but can be read without knowing all the background of the Quincy-verse.
What matters is the man the world once knew as Dracula just lost one of his favorite humans. When normal beings lose someone this close to violence, they go on drinking sprees. “Drinking spree” takes on new meaning when applied to the world’s most famous vampire. Bubba’s job is to bring him back before that becomes a problem.
But can he? Especially when while Monster Hunting, something is hunting him and his team. Can they all make it out alive? (or undead in one case.)
This is a masterpiece of a book with the laughter and tears only possible with a long-running series where you KNOW the characters.