Me and the Monkey by Andy Darby – 4 Star Book Review

Well there’s this talking monkey who won me in a game of Othello in a coffee shop in Amsterdam. He came back to Cornwall with me and has become a prolific reader and dabbler in magic. He also has past life flash backs – the most prominent of which are the Nam special forces ones.

Welcome to one of the September 20th stops on the blog tour for Me and the Monkey by Andy Darby with Rachel’s Random Resources. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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About the Book

Me and The Monkey
Chronicles of the Monkey God Volume One
by Andy Darby

Published 10 July 2021
Bad Press Ink

Genre: Humour / Fantasy
Page Count: 225
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Well there’s this talking monkey who won me in a game of Othello in a coffee shop in Amsterdam. He came back to Cornwall with me and has become a prolific reader and dabbler in magic. He also has past life flash backs – the most prominent of which are the Nam special forces ones. We have partially deceased girlfriends who apparently eat dead bodies. The Monkey created a sort of black hole in the spare bedroom and now we have a team of nerds investigating it and trying to stop ‘things’ coming out of it. A bunch of Oriental hit men who appear to believe he is a god attempted to steal The Monkey’s magic lolly pop sticks, but he managed to blow them up in their caravan. We are off to Cambodia in search of a temple from which came a monkey faced pendant with glowing eyes and we seem to have upset an international cabal who are out to get us. Oh, and did I mention that The Monkey likes a cigar and we regularly get very drunk on Jack Daniels…

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My Review

My Rating: 4 Stars
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I was granted complimentary access to Me and the Monkey as part of my participation in a blog tour for this title with Rachel’s Random Resources. Thank you to all involved in affording me this opportunity! My thoughts are my own and my review is honest.

The Monkey God who will eventually be responsible for the downfall of the world as we know it has reincarnated and awakened, but for now he’s rooming with some poor sap in England who won him in a back alley pub game of Go. Between spare room blackholes and an eager ghost hunting team sticking around to study it, a pair of very attractive ghouls, and randomly surfacing past life memories of life as a Vietnam War soldier, this monkey brings a whole lot of “interesting” into his companion’s life, and it’s all documented in a zoologist’s observation journal style collection of blog posts.

I am both very glad I was not the poor soul who won that game of Go and very glad that the one who did decided to start a blog about it. What a ride this book is! If you like absurdist low fantasy, this one needs to be on your to-be-read list. This is for fans of authors like Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett, but only the ones who also love cult media like The Men Who Stare at Goats. This one’s weird and absurd in a bit more of a vulgar way than Pratchett, and those who have a soft spot for the culture of the 70s will surely appreciate this monkey’s point of view on the world.

My only complaint is the sheer number of times this monkey throws feces (not the word used in the book, just trying not to get flagged for foul language!) Sure, monkeys do that, and sure, this one’s not very nice, but that particular gag got old in the first 10 pages.

Thanks for a good long laugh!

About the Author

Andy Darby, would-be Viking, and lover of the bizarre. Mission – infest the world with his strange creations. He is the author of Me and The Monkey.

Son of a WW2 Commando, growing up in 1970s Birmingham, as a teenager Andy became a fan of heavy metal, fronting several metal bands over the years. His passion for martial arts also began in the 70s and has continued to the present. Competing as a bodybuilder and playing American Football for the Birmingham Bulls took up much of his 20s.

Following a mixed career involving working in a jewellery factory, spraying cars, and office work, he finally managed to follow his other passion, art, and began a career as a designer. A marketing department honed his skills, and he became aware of the world of designing for live events, joining a small production company, and eventually becoming creative director of their larger parent company. Moving to Cornwall he decided it was time to go freelance setting up his own business focusing on motion graphic design.

In the late 1990s he began to get the urge to write and his laptop drive is littered with the unformed creations that have popped into his head. Me and The Monkey is his first novel, coming to life as an experiment in having the discipline to write something every day during a period when he was travelling extensively for work. The story was written during train journeys, flights, backstage at events, 2am in hotel rooms, even during stops at motorway service stations, and was often written on his phone or iPad.

Andy lives on the north coast of Cornwall with his artist wife, teenage daughter, cat, two ponies, and constantly growing library. He still secretly thinks he could be a big wave surfer regardless of what reality tells him.

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Giveaway Alert!

Giveaway to Win a signed Hardback of Me and the Monkey, limited edition print and more (Open INT)

1^st Prize

1 x Hardback book – author signed and numbered (out of 250)

1 x spliff bookmark – author signed

1 x promotional limited edition print – author and illustrator signed (out of 250)

1 x Monkey death from above T-shirt

9 x Runners up prize.

1 x signed spliff bookmarks &

1 x signed and numbered promo print

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