The author cannot for the life of him decide what he wants to write: a fun adventure story for the adolescent at heart, or a gritty magic-realist what-if. In the end, he tries to sit on both chairs at once and both ass cheeks have to clench super hard for him not to fall through. But if one adapts to the mood swings, it’s a good yarn. The world-building feels rushed but a lot of video games have issues with over-reliance on exposition for lore, so even that feels organic to the genre.
The narrator is fabulous. I *know* it’s not Patrick Warburton, but that is 100% whom I am imagining as Carl. The reader has his intonations down pat.