I quite enjoyed this story, though I got a little teeth-grindy when we got to the child rape. That's probably an artifact of my work with unfiltered slushpiles; whenever anyone needs to add DEPTH to their story, they go right for the rape button and it's just tiring. I still don't think this story quite justified its use, either - mere hitting would have been quite enough - but my eye-rolling is probably more extreme than most.
I was struck while listening that, other than being a teddy bear, this was a straight-up sword and sorcery tale straight out of the early days. The hero is crowned champion of light, battles a variety of monsters, and sacrifices himself against his final foe; the reminiscences, the other characters, everything would remain almost unchanged if you replaced Sundae with a grizzled swordsman, the parents with kings and queens, and the houses with a variety of goofy continents with apostrophes in their names. I'm still not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, honestly. On the one hand, I do enjoy a straight-up adventure story now and then; on the other hand, I felt like the correspondence was a little too close, that the story could have worked with its own viewpoint a little more thoroughly.