Ack-Ack Macaque: The Complete Trilogy

by Gareth L. Powell

Once, Twice, Three Times a Monkey

Life is good for Ack-Ack Macaque. Every day the cynical, cigar-chomping, hard-drinking monkey climbs into his Spitfire to do battle with the waves of German ninjas parachuting over the gentle fields of Kent. But life is not all the joyous rattle of machine guns and the roar of the engine, as Ack-Ack is about to find out…

Because it is not 1944. It is the 21st century, in a world where France and Germany merged in the late 1950s, where nuclear-powered Zeppelins circle the globe, where technology is rapidly changing humanity, and Ack-Ack has lived his whole life in a videogame.

Ex-journalist Victoria Valois finds herself drawn into a deadly game of cat and mouse with the man who butchered her husband and stole his electronic soul. The heir to the British throne is on the run after an illegal break-in at a research laboratory, and Ack-Ack has been rudely awakened from his game world to find the doomsday clock ticking towards Armageddon…

Two unlikely heroes and one mightily pissed-off monkey come together in a sci-fi trilogy full of action, adventure, bananas and bottles of rum.

Includes the original Ack-Ack Macaque short story and a brand new epilogue, The Last Macaque .

Genres: Science Fiction, Alternate History, Fantasy

792 pages, Paperback

Published January 16, 2018

About the author

Novelist

Reviews

[Stephen Robert Collins]

A Three volume book &;including extra story for my 59th birthday on 20th of Feb 2018 best of all I payed £0.99 as got rest free from Waterston's points.
Vol.1:Ack-Ack Macaque (Ma Kar Que) they are 23 types from big to small ape. Starts attempted assassination of King William V then moves on to vile murder of Paul the bisexual ex husband of brain damaged Ex-jourlist who can no longer read or write Victoria Valois but in 21st century interface has moved on.To be an AI with a life of his own outside the WWII what if ...game.This both comical & serious but it is also a crime And Thriller too.
When the twist of the Monkey's tail come out its a paw of a tail. Murder ,cloning, soul chasing,hacking & lot of monkey business.
And now for Hive Monkey the second book :This direct sequal so it's is difficult to real review it as if say anything it's spoiler zone for volume 1.This set in 2059 and lot questions left over from volume one including bring on the Cybermen comes out. Read volume 1 first this one of those books you cannot read in wrong order.
This now 2060 & Ack is even more bad tempered than in first book.There is a sf author been chased by murders hell bent in killing him he has been compared to Philip K.Dick (Powell likes to think he is a Dickhead- fan of Dick that's what there called ) & H.P.Lovecraft but how any author can be like both at same time is puzzle unless they refuting to drugs.William Cole the author in mind has Doppelganger called Bill he's from an another dimension or so he saws.
Then there's Reynolds another mystery who wants Ack to join his group what group? This different from the first book but it still some of same people. But lot of it is very different from vol.1
This has lot more comedy than the first because of in jokes too.
Now for volume 3:We come full circle to La Planète des Singes by Pierre Boulte but this case it's not just one Planet of Apes but dimensions of them & lot of unfinished business for Ack. after all. And return of Big Mama cyborg bitch from Hell or Mars she is returning to destroy all of the world's but this time the wicked witch has The Armies of Monkeys & the hive minds to deal with & pissed of Ack Ack
This book also Inc a bonus short .This been an interesting three volume set that has payed tribute to Sun Wukong the famous Monkey God of China who was made into TV series who some people may know as Monkey magic & the famous 1963 Monkey Planet a short book that has been made into over 10 movies & TV series & made Charlton Heston into house hold name .And finish an insane wacky mad twist that blow your socks off.

[Stewart Tame]

First of all, I love the title! The title and the cover drew my eye, and the back cover copy convinced me to buy the book. Now that's what I call marketing!

Ack-Ack is a character for the ages. Yes, he’s an intelligent, gun-wielding, talking monkey. When we first encounter him, he's a character in a video game, an online multiplayer adventure involving aerial combat of the WWII variety against German ninjas. Yes. Because 1) video games, and 2) this is an alternate world in which Germany and France merged into a single empire, so some history is different. Large nuclear-powered zeppelins fly the skies. If pressed to describe the setting, I’d call it “dieselpunk,” though, while I have heard the term, I’m not sure if I’m applying it correctly.

Needless to say, Ack-Ack turns out to be more than just a video game character. The other main characters--from the first book at least--are Victoria, former journalist investigating the death of her ex-husband, and Merovech, teenager and heir to the British throne. The death of Victoria’s ex is just the tip of the iceberg, and the three soon find themselves caught up a high-reaching plot, with nothing less than the future of humanity at stake … And that's just the first book in the trilogy. The stakes get considerably higher in the next two books.

This was every bit as much fun as I’d hoped. The action moves along at a brisk pace. The characters are fun. Ack-Ack himself is sensational. The SF concepts are properly mind-blowing. Some concepts--downloadable personalities and cyborg enhancements, for instance--are classic stuff, but Powell also includes nods to recent stories about whether or not we live in a simulated reaity and multiple universes and more. He’s not quite in Warren Ellis or Charles Stross territory as far as gonzo futurism goes, but he definitely approaches that level.

The ending of the third book seemed a little rushed to me. It just felt not quite satisfying, though I have a hard time putting my finger on exactly why. The Coda, “The Last Macaque,“ makes for a much better ending--or at least I think so--and I’m glad that it was included in this omnibus edition. The final short story doesn't really fit into the continuity of the rest of the book, but it's excellent, and a fun look at what amounts to an early draft of the titular Macaque.

I agonized on whether this was a four or five star book. It's one of the best SF novels I’ve read in a long time, and I definitely commend it to the attention of anyone with any interest in the genre. But it's also just not quite as Oh! My! God! amazing as some of the books I’ve rated at five stars in the past. In the end, I settled for four, but know that it's actually at least 4.5 if not higher. Highly recommended!

[Robert]

Ack-Ack Macaque

The cigar chomping No.1 ace Spitfire pilot of WWII and defender against incessant waves of Nazi ninja paratroopers is a monkey - code name Ack-Ack Macaque. If that doesn't on it's own make you want to read this book then I suspect it's not for you. But! There's more! Way more. Nuclear powered airships. Conspiracies. The Prince of Wales. Bad Facelift Man. A weird cult. Possible armageddon. A rocket to Mars. well, I don't want to mention all the fun stuff - let's leave some surprises.

My only complaint is that such an amazing title character really should have more time in his own book. Still, there are two more novels and a couple of shorts in this omnibus.

Hive Monkey

Another rip-roaring sci-fi adventure, this time with as much cyborg WWII flying-ace monkey as you could want! It moves along faster than Ack-Ack Macaque's Spitfire can fly, which is almost enough to make you not notice that the new characters and ideas are largely under-developed and unoriginal. It's over in a flash and it's fun but it's pretty flimsy.

Macaque Attack

Another bizarre mix of the original and the epically derivative as we get more unexpected revelations and gung-ho adventure with the now aging artificially enhanced macaque that likes beer, cigars and fighting those intent on genocide and universal domination. It's a fitting conclusion for the gun-toting monkey, even if some of the other characters' stories are left unresolved.

There's a bonus story that was the first to feature Ack-Ack, published prior to the novels. It has a different conception of the character and doesn't fit into the world of the novels, but it's a good story.

[Shadowdenizen]

4 stars.
Another hidden gem that falls right into the "WAY better than it has any right to be" category.

[Rhoddi]

Disappointing. With a cover of a monkey striking a pose firing handguns you'd think this book would be exciting, but unfortunately after around 130 pages I found it quite bland. It felt like a mishmash of ideas, weird character decisions to push the story forward, with a not very engaging style of writing.

When your mind wanders off thinking about stuff at work than enjoying reading a book, you know there's something wrong.

[Pete Harris]

Crank everything up to elevety stupid

I must admit that having read this book I feel a bit grubby. It is spectacularly trashy, as squishy a bit of pulp as it is possible to imagine. It is less a trilogy of books and more a trilogy of high concepts strung together with almost endless action sequences in which everything is cranked up to eleventy stupid.

The first book opens in a mid 21st century world with a style mid way between steam punk and cyberpunk. This is a world where Britain and France merged to become a global superpower, and the second world war never happened. A journalist travels from Paris to London on a giant airship to find out about the death of her ex husband, and to recover his digitally downloaded personality. Meanwhile in an alternate "reality", WW2 is very much on, but the RAF's leading air ace is a hard drinking, cigar smoking, genetically enhanced Macaque monkey. Then a lot of people and things get blown up, shot at, and crashed together.

It is a classic piece of low quality, high concept fiction. Take a big idea, then put your foot down as hard as possible on the accelerator and hope your readers are so caught up with the momentum of the thing, or at least desperately hanging on to the gaudy fairground ride, that they don't notice the massive plot holes or lack of character development.

In the first book of the three author Gareth Powell gets away with it. He delivers an action thriller which is pretty good fun. It is hard to dislike a book in which a simian spitfire pilot has a female Glasgow teenager as his wingman (woman). A book in which the heir to the throne of England and France runs away with a penniless French student. A book in which King William (work out the timeline) is married to a corporate matriarch. A book whose denouement involves a Zeppelin crashing onto the Royal Yacht.

If the fuel for the first book is a mixture of steam punk, digital personality recording, and of course the military monkey, the second is built on a combination of the quantum multiverse and networked personalities. Journalist Victoria and AckAck Macaque have joined forces on a giant airship now owned by the former. Victoria's ex husband is a hologram contained in a model car. Having become global celebrities at the end of the first book, primate pilot and newshound are trying to withdraw and live privately, but that doesn't last when a drug addled novelist witnesses the murder of his doppelgänger. This is the precursor to an invasion across the multiverse by a hive mind lead by a strangely familiar figure. That in turn is the excuse for the Macaque to smoke, drink, blow things up, shoot people and crash things together. It starts to get a bit repetitive.

The final book reverses the pattern. It starts off with the smashy stuff, and then, two thirds of the way through, completely changes, changes to the extent of "hang on a minute, am I still reading the same book." It suddenly introduces some seriously interesting ideas about a holographic universe right from the extreme fringes of quantum physics. These lead to, after all that has come before, an oddly quiet and melancholic finale. Sadly however, the end comes too quickly for anything genuinely interesting to happen. Before the welcome change of pace, all the villains from the two previous books come together, and the monkey gets to smoke, drink, etc etc etc.

The best science fiction is the fiction of ideas and finds new ways to say things about the human condition, and about contemporary society, while having a lot of fun on the way. Iain M Banks was,for example, a writer who combined social commentary with being enormously entertaining. In that context I find Gareth L Powell a really frustrating writer. He starts off with some really big ideas, but then doesn't take them anywhere other than using them as the background for mindless action sequences.

Entertaining but shallow.

[Christopher]

This is three books bound together in a single volume.

I was interested in the alternative history setting of an Anglo-French union presented in the first book, but this has increasingly less impact on the story as the book goes on. Instead the story quickly started to feel like a adventure from a Transhuman Space RPG game. The idea of soul catchers and digital backups (as well as fully immersive video games) is presented without too much context as to how this came about or how it really shapes society. That's OK as we get drawn deeper into the main adventure story - especially as out namesake character starts rampaging around the page. The monkey neither needs nor cares to have technology explained.

By the second book we've gotten even further afield with introducing cross-time shenanigans. This ends with the promise of an army of uplifted monkeys and I began to wonder if the author meant to be invoking the Monkey King. By the third book this is recognized as our heroes floating fortress has been renamed in honor of Sun Wukong.

Getting into the third book I felt at times like I was reading a Charles Strossnovel, and not in a good way. Some of the absurd ideas were running away with the characters and complete changes of setting or psychedelic sequences were justified mainly to let the author explore an idea only peripheral to the plot. The increasing absurdity starts to fall in on itself under its own weight, but our hero continues to level up, ending the whole thing in a state of effective techno-divinity.

I feel like there is some bad sexual politics throughout the books, and the extra story at the end definitely doubled-down on that. I tried at times to tun my critic's eye on this but either I was too tired or just kept skipping over the frothy top of the pulpy story.

[Mark Phillips]

I was very frustrated with this trilogy. It should've been brilliant and kept failing to live up to its promise. The general idea is that in 2056, a macaque has been modified with "gelware" as a test case for loading personality recordings into new bodies. As a leftover experiment, his creators wire his brain into a WWII combat game where he becomes a cult sensation as a cigar-chomping, rum-swilling, Spitfire pilot that likes to blow things up. An AI rights advocate and her boyfriend, the heir apparent to the combined British/French/Irish/Norwegian/Commonwealth crown, free the monkey from his endless combat world into a much more complex reality. Over the course of the trilogy, we get the sleeving from Altered Carbon, the multiple levels of reality from The Matrix and The Ring trilogy, the Borg from Star Trek, the uplifted apes from Planet of the Apes and Startide Rising, the doomed race finding refuge in the past from the Star Trek episode, "All Our Yesterdays," and about a dozen more plot devices done better elsewhere. The action is good but is interrupted by virtually every character whining about their feelings, endlessly and repetitively, over-emoting, and making horrendously irrational strategic and tactical errors, usually getting saved from their ineptitude by deus ex machinas. Then, in the third book, Powell introduces a whole new plot and characters culled from his book The Recollection, which just seems completely gratuitous.

[Smehur]

I did not finish this. It's been a long while since I disliked a work of fiction this much. It's not bad in any obvious way. The writing is competent (though it could have been edited better), and some of the sci-fi premises are interesting. But I just couldn't muster a single atom of care for any of the characters, nor for the setting and its future. The story is fine in terms of sequence and logic of events, but it lacks heart. The shallowly outlined people who enact and inhabit it are so distant and so busy executing the breakneck pace that they never actually feel anything, and neither did I. After struggling to get into it for three weeks, I dropped it at 20%. That's, I believe, more than 1/2 of the first book in the trilogy, so it's not like I didn't give it a chance. RIP.

[Cliff]

I've been a time reading the full trilogy. Nearly 800 pages of paperback can become very heavy! However, I'm glad I finally made it to the end. The books use several tropes that are becoming common in sci fi. There's the TV series which has an aware, talking chimpanzee butler (sorry, the name escapes me), David Brin has posited an entire series, The Uplift, on the raising of races to sentience, Terry Pratchett has the Long Earth series which is based on a multi verse. This is not unusual with sci fi which is so often a mirror of current scientific thinking or common fears. When I started reading the genre way back in the 1950s every second book appeared to be about the after effects of a nuclear holocaust. Needless to say, returning to this trilogy, I enjoyed the authors imagination and his characters. Where he got the name Merovech for the king, however, escapes me.

[Shaun Dyer]

Ack-Ack Macaque is a strange mix of steampunk, alternate history and science fiction staring an uplifted monkey World War 2 fighter pilot. This is certainly something you’ll not find anywhere else. The first book is undoubtedly the pinnacle of the trilogy with some brilliant Sci-Fi concepts wedged between swashbuckling action scenes but all the books have something different that make them worth a read. As a bonus in the trilogy you even get the original Ack-Ack Macaque short story which while quite the departure from the main narrative but makes for an interesting diversion.

Overall a Ack-Ack is decent Sci-Fi romp that takes you to some interesting places and is well worth the price of admission 4/5.

[Paul]

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.

[Amanda Peterson]

I found this book at Barnes and Noble and thought I would read it on a whim. There are fascinating characters and developments within the story, especially liked the online articles in the book which give the world depth. What prevented it from getting a higher score was at times so much was being thrown at you. It is not to say the book is bad, there was a lot to take in.

[John Robinson]

I'm not sure how I ended up with this omnibus edition of Powell's supercharged simian hero...
And I'm a little disturbed that I paid even a dollar for it (I'm reasonably certain I got it on sale). I've definitely read worse dieselpunk adventure...but there is something indefinable missing from this action packed tale.

[Alice]

There's nothing not to like about this romp of a trilogy that takes the premise of a monkey given artificial intelligence escaping from his WW2 flying combat sim and rampaging across an expanding universe of airships, cyborgs, cults and alternate timelines.

[Steve]

What an absolute shambles

Starts out strong and then just loses the plot. The last quarter or so of the last book is the worst, leading to a super sucky ending. This is Alistair Reynolds level bad ending.

[david]

Total crap

Oh I spelt it wrong. I want my money back. I would like to watch the author fly a damaged aircraft

[B. Ross Ashley]

Hilarious.

[Michael]

Epic

Everything sci-fi should be and more. Totally subversive, a trip for your mind without using any illegal substances, WOW. Epic.

[Mark Levine]

Outstanding

Truly engaging and readable. Hilarious and exciting. Don't miss this major writing accomplishment. And stock up on cigars, rum, and bananas.

[Andy McIsaac]

Finished the first couple of sections - novellas? - and parked it. It's... interesting, if not arresting. I may be back to finish it.

[Starfly]

I didn't want to finish these books because it was a end to a interesting series. The main character was someone you could like and at the same time enjoy his misbehaving.

[Chantelle Williams]

Loved it. New exciting refreshing

[Rosemary Leggett]

Entertaining, action packed romp. Great holiday read and the best front cover!

[Mike]

Ack-Ack Macaque

I knew nothing about Ack-Ack Macaque before I started except the picture on the cover and that it was by Gareth L. Powell whose Embers of War trilogy caused me to by the book. The cover seemed to imply that it was about a monkey flyer from world war 2 who, I guess, had to be some what uplifted. While some of the story was set in world war 2 and Ack-Ack Macaque was a character in the story, it was much more than that. It had political intrigue, royal romance, zeppelins and much more in an alternate history/Science Fiction adventure. It made for a very enjoyable romp.

Hive Monkey

Similar style to Ack-Ack, but it seemed to lack something the original had, that I can't put my finger on. I didn't enjoy it as much, still not bad though.

Macaque Attack

I struggled with Macaque Attack at first and made little headway, then all of a sudden I got into it and couldn't put it, then it jumped the shark and finally it was a bit of a mess.

Ack-Ack Macaque - The Original Short Story

It is strange reading this after the 3 novels, because, although this has a character called Ack-Ack Macaque, it is a totally different story. Having said that though I quite enjoyed it.

Overall this was too much of a door stop for me, which might be why I think if Powell had stopped after the first novel I would have really loved this, instead of it being just okay.

[Geoff Clarke]

Which is the more common SF trope: airships or malfunctioning generation ships?

The first book, which I almost finished, was cute without being interesting. Characters were pretty thin, and evil folks were eeeeeevil. I think it was aiming for a fun romp, but it never quite got there.

[Brandon Bergman]

Ooo, oo AHHHAAAAHHH OOOOoooOOO aaaaaah AAAAAAAAAAAH