Better than the first part, just barely.

Disclaimer: I was provided a copy of this audiobook free of charge in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

Karl is back, or more, Karl's journey across the islands continues in the sequel to the Original Bridge Quest continues in Orc's Bane.

Having become separated from his fellowPlayer Characters' in the original story, he is now playing catch-up with an NPC in tow and the story finally begins to expand.

This time around, Karl receives a mission from an NPC to rescue their Son and an item in their possession who's been captured by Orcs and this, along with the receipt of his first powerful magical-weapon, starts him down a road that leads to warring nations and an Orcish army.

On paper, this sounds like the series has started to expand and grow but, to be honest, it is really just more of the same. Karl is still a depressingly boring character, there are heavily-repeated moments that mimic Thor's Hammer and, at twice the length of book 1, the story really does feel all the worse for it.

Marc Szewcyzk is back again narrating and unfortunately his performance was as underwhelming as Part one but again, I fully blame the lacklustre narrative for this as, when there are moments of excitement, he rises to the occasions admirably but regrettably these are very few-and-far-between.

As for the ending, this was probably the worst part of the series as the players' acceptance of the situation was easily won and how quickly they were able to prepare and enact the mission the Felix assigned to them was nonsensical and really was the final nail for me.

I believe there will be more Bridge Quests but I won't be revisiting this world. It's a nice idea and the double-dealing of the corporation coupled with the state of the real-world society outside of the game was very clever but the core of the book is flawed and lacks any sense of adventure or fun.

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