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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 of fun.