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Paul

Paul@books.theunseen.city

Joined 9 months ago

I will read pretty much anything, although my preferences tend to veer towards Science Fiction (especially Space Opera) and Fantasy (especially Epic Fantasy).

You can also find me on Mastodon

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Paul's books

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2023 Reading Goal

42% complete! Paul has read 12 of 28 books.

Some of the Best from Tor.com (EBook, 2023, Tor.com) 3 stars

Some of the Best from Tor.com: 15th Anniversary Edition, our free short fiction bundle, features …

More Misses Than Hits

2 stars

Any collection of short stories is always a hit and miss affair, but for me this one had a lot more misses than hits. Having reached the end of the collection, nothing really stands out and many of the stories felt more like an exercise in style over narrative.

The Complete Ack-Ack Macaque Trilogy (1) (Paperback, 2018, Solaris) 4 stars

Life is good for Ack-Ack Macaque. Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into …

Smarter than your average talking monkey

4 stars

All three novels in the Ack-Ack Macaque trilogy, along with a bonus short story at the end. This is way better than I expected it to be.

The book was discounted, so I picked it up expecting some light pulpy fun. And it certainly does display a very pulp sensibility and is a lot of fun, but it's also much more than this. There are also a slew of genuinely SF ideas thrown into the genre-mashing mix and Gareth L. Powell throws them around with such abandon that you don't realise just how much is in there until you get to the end.

The first novel of the three is definitely the high point and it does start to feel a bit forced by the time the final novel gets started, but starting from such a high bar, even this final novel in the trilogy manages to remain a lot …

The Complete Ack-Ack Macaque Trilogy (1) (Paperback, 2018, Solaris) 4 stars

Life is good for Ack-Ack Macaque. Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into …

If anything Hive Monkey, the second book in this trilogy is even madder than the first.

Pulp heroes, airships, a borg-like cult and a monkey in search of a troupe. As with the previous novel, this is a really fun read which also has a few serious points to make.

And the sheer believability of the world Gareth L. Powell really is quite incredible.

The Complete Ack-Ack Macaque Trilogy (1) (Paperback, 2018, Solaris) 4 stars

Life is good for Ack-Ack Macaque. Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into …

I've just finished the first novel in this collection and it's very different to what I was expecting. And much, much better.

The book is a fantastic collision of genres -- from WWII pulp action to techno-thriller, set in an alternate history with a heavy dose of cyberpunk, and a lot to say about vivisection, identity and individual freedoms.

And it all comes together superbly.