This second excursion for the cigar-chomping aviator monkey (who for me is still speaking in Ron Perelman's Hellboy voice) is great fun and has the occasional surprise. but equally some unnecessary info-dumping (an AI airship navigator in an alternate 2059 declares "We shall fly to Bath, which is so named for the Roman baths there") and a terrible tendency for Powell to not only recap events from earlier in the novel, or in the previous novel, but to keep on repeating those recaps!!

So many of the plot devices have been used before; the Gestalt are Star Trek's Borg in fancy suits, and there were lots of plot points that I could see coming a mile off. And I spotted at least one quote from 'Aliens'...

And it still suffers from the Alphaville effect: the story may be set in an alternative 2059, but it feels like the present day. Even then, there are issues: at one point, one of the characters is driving a Mercedes and it begins to rain, so they "...hit the wipers." Well, I used to drive a Mercedes that dated from 2002, and the wipers on that came on automatically when it started raining. In another instance, Ack-Ack Macaque shoots up an articulated lorry (strictly in self-defence) and Powell describes the driver's expression. I would have thought that by 2059, all lorries would be self-driving. It's not as though this book pre-dates the advances in automotive tech that will bring us these things...

Oh, and the action never strays north of the Thames Valley and M4 corridor, even when Ack-Ack acquires a flight of vintage Spitfires, which he has flying out of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at Yeovilton, for some incomprehensible reason. The Fleet Air Arm never flew Spitfires, but its navalised variant, the Seafire; Yeovilton isn't an operational museum, so it doesn't have hangars - they all belong to the operational air base next door. If Powell was going to have a flight of Spitfires, they should have operated out of the Imperial War Museum's airfield at Duxford, just outside Cambridge, where there are restoration hangars.

(This may all sound like nerdy nit-picking; and I plead guilty. But I didn't put the nerdy stuff in - the author did. So he might as well have got it right. Cambridge should still be acceptably Home Counties.)

But despite all that, it was still fun. ( )

This sequel to Ack-Ack Macaque was more or less exactly what I needed right now: a short, fun, easy read that made a nice break from the more difficult books I've been reading lately. It picks up where Ack-Ack Macaque left off, with Victoria Valois captaining the ship her uncle left her, Ack-Ack Macaque working for her but at a loose end, and Victoria's dead husband Paul continuing his life-after-life, this time as a computer simulation who can be projected as a hologram.

The plot this time involves parallel universes and a creepy cult called the Gestalt, whose goal is to assimilate everyone in every parallel universe into the same hive mind. Again, it's very reminiscent of Doctor Who, but Powell tamps down the ridiculousness just enough this time to emerge with a more believable, and thus more engaging, book. To be clear, a book with a grizzled and foul-mouthed warplane-flying talking monkey still does require a fair amount of suspension of disbelief, but at least the Prince of Wales was not a major character this time, and the villains' motivations seemed more in the realm of what cult leaders really would do if they had access to the same technology.

On the surface I've given this book the same three stars as I gave Ack-Ack Macaque, but I feel like this time I'm rounding down, while with that one I rounded up. These are not the most deeply moving books I've ever read, but at least I had fun with this one. ( )

Interesting characters, original premise, well-written and gripping prose..............................my only critical observation, perhaps a little too much direct elucidation of the character's particular characteristics.......................would have preferred that this was picked up indirectly through the telling of the story. Probably really a 3.75 for me, but not an option on LibraryThing! ( )

Good

In Ack-Ack Macaque Gareth L Powell introduced us to the cigar chomping, Spitfire flying, foul talking uplifted Monkey who escaped from an artificial reality game to help save the world. In this sequel he is back, bigger, badder and with more explosions. Like a movie franchise the first book sets up the world and the tone and the second raises the stakes and cranks up the action. In this, the middle of a trilogy, we are introduced to a new enemy , the Gestalt, a hive mind hell bent on assimilating Ack-Ack’s world. With his friends from the first book – Victoria Valois and her dead husband Paul (who in this one has been upgraded to hologram status), the hacker K8, a cameo from Merovich who is now King, and introducing a new character William Cole, a SF writer, Ack-Ack sets out to save the world again. From about the halfway point this is all action and Powell does well to keep the wheels spinning, and like most action films you don’t want to stop and ask questions as the pages fly by. If you like the first book you’ll love this second one.

Overall - As with the first book there is a cinematic feel and I could totally see this as an anime film. It feel it’s too long to wait for the third book! ( )