An observation: If the first book in a series is called “Agent Seventeen”, wouldn’t the sequel be called something like “Agent Eighteen”? A minor quibble. The important thing to note is that the second in this series has ramped the volume up to 11. More explosions, more certain deaths avoided, more very very bad (and inept) villains, more silliness all around. Some of the tech stuff was especially nutty: crack intelligence operatives do their research using … Google Earth. Yes, it was fun. And yes, I felt my brain cells melting away the more time I spent in this world.