I don’t think I could give more praise to this book. It manages to blend just about all my desired elements pretty evenly.
The main character Ned has an antisocial personality (one of his large ties to remain in game), but is accompanied by Frank, the talking Bearded Axe AI. Frank has plenty of helpful info, but also limits his knowledge, so it isn’t too over powered. Frank is also very much the comedic relief without being dumb humor. While being antagonistic towards Ned, Frank and he develop a sort of friendship. To my surprise, Frank and not just Ned have a lot of character development over the course of the book. It’s not just them, there are some allies in there too, NPC and player.
On the RPG side of things, Ned has a few fairly unique quests. They’re not straightforward, and they don’t over power him. There are enough numbers, skills, spells, traits, and titles that you would expect, but not so many that would be overbearing in audio format. There is a fair amount of glazing over numbers and telling story, but enough numbers to remain very RPG.
I very much enjoyed this book. Can’t wait for the sequel.