The author has a degree in computer science and worked as a programmer and technical writer before becoming a full-time science fiction author, so yes.

IIRC, @cstross (who is on the HN here at times) had his first published work in contributions to the AD&D Monster Manual.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Manual

Legit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cstross

Yes, generally not much in the way of CSI tech... just some magic ;) at least as far as I recall.. the first few books had some pretty amusing 90sish IT stuff but that mostly falls away as the universe gets built / the mc does very little IT.

There is, however, at least one nasty incident of souls sucked away by PowerPoint. You have been warned. :-)