Posted by I read this entirely because Jeff Hays was a narrator for this audiobook — there were several so he wasn’t the only one but that’s fine. I also tend to like snarky undead characters and this looked to fit two bills at once.
This is the story of an old wizard who maxed out all of his stats. This enraged him. He can’t level up any further so what’s the point of life? Not a lot, at least in his perspective. So, he went off to go conquer the Gods. He did that. Then he killed Death which may have been a mistake because now he’s bored and can’t die. So, he decided to go to sleep until the end of time and then wake up to witness it. Pretty metal goals NGL. Then some asshole woke him up.
He kills the dude, but then figures it’s been about 2,000 years since he put himself to sleep so why not walk around a little, explore the world and how it’s changed, and then go back to sleep? He turns the poor dude who woke him up into an undead butler who calls him Daddy. When he tried to get the kid to stop calling him Daddy, the kid switched to Bone Daddy (this lich has a classic skeleton appearance as the cover suggests). He didn’t like that either, but let it go before it got worse.
Bone Daddy is a jerk. He’s very self absorbed because he knows he’s the highest level being around, and this leads him to treats people as things. That’s the root of all evil, after all. He’s got a sense of humor but it doesn’t always mesh with mine, lol. He’s written to be snarky dad-joking lich to take the edge of his pure evil/selfishness. It kind of worked, but again, I didn’t totally gel with his humor which is surprising considering it was mostly word play and dad jokes.
Bone Daddy treats magic like science. He goes as far as to dissect warlocks to see how their magic works. He has a deep respect for the process of experimentation and documenting results. It’s like watching a mad scientist/wizard. Since he’s awake now he needs an apprentice, and so he’s helping level up his little helper he named Limpet. She’s so devoted to him that she agrees to be his test subject and willingly is treated like trash and thanks him for it. She does gain a lot of knowledge and training. So, perhaps it’s worth the suffering and ill treatment? I dunno, I would have dipped a long time ago, but slowly, hopefully in a way he didn’t notice me leaving. She has a goal to go kill some dude but you don’t know why at first. The audiobook gives her such a sweet innocent voice but she’s chanting these seriously destructive spells and it’s a funny combination. It’s kind of like if Louise Belcher from Bob’s Burgers suddenly went evil.
Some of the humor here made me groan, and the way the laugh was done in the audiobook actually annoyed me. There are a ton of puns that are so bad I almost didn’t realize what the pun was because it didn’t feel like an actual joke. Other things landed very well and they were more of the off hand remarks that weren’t laid up liked a joke. If that makes sense. It’s like the jokes were overworked or over emphasized. There are also a number of pop culture references up to an including a version of “these are not the X you’re looking for”, which may or may not appeal to you. I’m usually fine with it as long as it’s not constant, and it wasn’t.
I think this would appeal to people who like master/apprentice relationships, but if they wanted to watch an evil duo and not a hero and hero in training.