Length: 7 hours 50 mins

After getting well into the Super-Powereds book series, and after getting to the end of the audio book range that has been published so far, I decided to check out more from the author.

I listened to Pear & Perils, and it wasn’t half bad.  And just recently decided to get NPCs.

And to be honest it’s pretty awesome.

I say it’s present tense because although I’ve finished the book, it’s part of an ongoing series.

I will definitely be listening to the rest of the series as it comes out.

Here’s the audible link, if you’re interested in listening to a sample or even getting it yourself.

http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/NPCs-Audiobook/B00NHY147E   (opens in a new tab)

The premise is basically a role-playing game, those ones directed by the chance of a 20-sided dice.  It starts off with some characters ‘adventurers’ playing the game and beginning to work their way through the imaginary world…going on quests on stuff, but when they find they’ve accidentally eaten some poisonous mushrooms, all their characters die.  Just afterwards some NPCs (Non Player Combatants – the equivalent of computer AI characters, but in a board game) decide to take the mantle of the ones that just died, and complete the quest that they were originally tasked with.

So you’re now of the perspective of the imaginary characters in their world but looking at it like it’s the real world.  There is sporadically some back & forth between the adventurers world and the imaginary world, and some ponderings to see if the imaginary world can affect the adventurers world.   Its all quite interesting to be honest.

On Friday I broke down on the expressway and ended up having to push my motorbike for around 3 hours trying to find an open petrol station.   ….This audio book was the company I had, and it made it bearable.  The book was awesome, the motorbike pushing character building was terrible, so this is high praise on the book.

I have since downloaded the 2nd book in the series and will listen to it momentarily.splittheparty_drewhayes_cover

As compared to other Drew Hayes novels, like I said I’m a huge fan of the Super-powereds series, and to be fair, it’s not as good as that.   But I also imagine that if you played some of these role playing d20 dice games growing up, you would have much more enjoyment than I did, even if I still greatly enjoyed it.

The story is actually very deep and has the potential to go very far.

Would recommend the book for anyone that wants a bit of fantasy escapism.

There’s meant to be an advert below which is a link for you to get 2 free audio books….if you can’t see it, ‘allow ads’ or ‘disable adblocker’  from your adblocker software on this website.  

Happy listening!

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