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I found this to be really, really slow going. I can see that the author is trying to immerse the reader in his world-building, but it really didn't work for me and I think there are two reasons for this. Firstly, the religion. The main belief system is basically Christianity with a few minor tweaks, and I found this really jarring. Secondly, and probably more significantly, not much happened for most of the book.

Having a detailed world is great and all, but you still need either a plot of some characters to hold the reader's attention. And, for me, this had neither. In=stead, we had a few characters trudging around having lengthy conversations, and not really getting anywhere.

Things do pick up by the end of the book, but this then introduces the problem of there being too many characters being introduced too quickly, making it difficult to keep track of what all of them are doing.

I think there is a good story under all of this, but the pacing really does leave a lot to be desired.

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 of fun.