I loved the hell out of this story. Yeah, sure, it was only mildly substantial, but so what? (I mean, really, how often does a talking monkey go wrong?).
I loved it for personal reasons. I had a college roommate who ran away from clown college to come back to actual college.
It got a lot of the Seattle detail right (there are two large insurance companies, Safeco and Pemco. Well, there were, but that's another story). Sadly, there's no drunk Rubik's Cube, but the EMP/Science Fiction Museum looks like the architect was drunk.
I loved the Ian Sholes -esque narration (there's an old reference for the young'uns).