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Deepest Dungeon #3
Heart of Strata
Martin dug too deep, he uncovered secrets that the Masters wanted buried forever, and now he must face his punishment.
Trapped inside the game that they once loved, Iron Riot are now faced with a slow death by dehydration as their bodies in the real world are left to rot. The Masters, enigmatic creators of Strata, are willing to let anyone die so long as it preserves their perfect imaginary world.
But there was one thing that they haven’t accounted A rat with a plan.
If Iron Riot can finish the game before the timer runs out, defeat the Archdukes, beat the system, and show everyone what they are capable of, then they’ll have the attention of the whole world. The Masters won’t be able to hide in that spotlight. They might be all-powerful, but that doesn’t mean that their hands can’t be forced.
At least, that’s what Martin told them the plan was…
Trapped inside the game that they once loved, Iron Riot are now faced with a slow death by dehydration as their bodies in the real world are left to rot. The Masters, enigmatic creators of Strata, are willing to let anyone die so long as it preserves their perfect imaginary world.
But there was one thing that they haven’t accounted A rat with a plan.
If Iron Riot can finish the game before the timer runs out, defeat the Archdukes, beat the system, and show everyone what they are capable of, then they’ll have the attention of the whole world. The Masters won’t be able to hide in that spotlight. They might be all-powerful, but that doesn’t mean that their hands can’t be forced.
At least, that’s what Martin told them the plan was…
- GenresFantasy
306 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 29, 2023
16 people are currently reading
10 people want to read
About the author
G.D. Penman
31 books82 followersG. D. Penman is a critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling fantasy author, and the ghostwriter of over 200 books across various genres. Prior to his literary career he worked as a bookseller, game designer, literary critic and editor. He lives in Dundee, Scotland with his partner, children and a vast menagerie of animals.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 27, 2023
rushed and ridiculous
I think the author gave up on finishing this story. Took something completely implausible and forced it. Took 50 pages of action and added 200pages of dialogue etc… read it to finish the story but don’t expect too much…
I think the author gave up on finishing this story. Took something completely implausible and forced it. Took 50 pages of action and added 200pages of dialogue etc… read it to finish the story but don’t expect too much…
March 9, 2024
1.5 rounded up to 2.
Setting:
This book takes place entirely within the “game” of Strata that readers will be quite familiar with by this point.
Characters:
Martin: Martin is now fully committed to the goal of getting to the end of the dungeon. He has always wanted to win, to prove his mental superiority and gain the ability to gloat about the size of his e-peen, but now his very existence is dependent on winning.
Lindsay: Lindsay is the least affected by the difficult position the group finds themselves in. She continues to crack jokes and, as much as possible, enjoys the game.
Jericho: Jericho continues to be standoffish. He's understandably very angry about being stuck in the game and is protective of Julia.
Julia: Julia is largely depressed about the entire scenario.
Plot:
Martin and company have had their ability to logout from the game taken away. They can’t stop playing. In an uncomfortably small amount of time, dehydration and starvation will begin to damage their real life bodies. Martin believes, and convinces the group, that their only hope is to push down through the remaining floors of the dungeon and kill the final boss. The instant notoriety of doing this will make them unignorable. The game masters won’t be able to simply make them disappear and will have to let them out. The group however has a tremendous amount of the dungeon left. Is there any hope of clearing all of it in time?
My Thoughts:
This review will talk about this book specifically but will also talk a bit about the series as a whole.
Ultimately Heart is a somewhat lackluster conclusion to a series that started well and made, at least for my money, a questionable choice in book two. In book two it’s shown to Martin, and by extension the reader, that Strata Online is no mere game. Starta is revealed, or at least extremely heavily suggested, to be… some sort of manifestation of the collective unconscious or an alternate reality or another dimension or… some other such complicated mumbo jumbo. The titular Heart of Strata is therefore a god of sorts and killing it would in theory irreparably damage or entirely destroy the world of Strata.
LitRPG novels always wind up with the question of how to make both the game world and the real world meaningfully important to the story and various authors have solved that in various ways. While Penman certainly gets points for originality, it doesn't feel like it really works. The developers found some sort of other reality and a means by which to go there and instead of mentioning how they made the greatest discovery in the entire history of mankind they made a video game out of it??? Even beyond that first point the developer’s behavior is extremely confusing. The developers would have had to have at least some degree of awareness of the strangeness here given that many NPCs in the game are, apparently, the lingering consciousnesses of former dead players and this cannot have been coded and definitely would have been noticed. And they were just like cool with that? The developers saw dead play testers getting stuck in the game and going insane and just… thought that was okay? “Oh nice we don't have to code a merchant for this town cause Frank's tortured ghost is doing it for us. Sweet, I can clock out early this week.” Is that how it went down? None of this makes any sense. I guess if I'm really trying to explain this you could argue that there's some sort of ultra greedy rich pile of trash who doesn't care about science at all and thought the best way to monetize this alternate reality was a video game. I cannot even begin to fathom what lead to that line of thinking but we'll go with it. From there, anyone who raised concerns about this being morally wrong or generally stupid was just killed because the developers are all evil. Maybe that's a tolerable excuse but it doesn't feel like I should have to do this kind of reaching for a justification.
Unfortunately the problems don't end there. Martin as a main character is generally unlikable throughout the entire series and in this book in particular. He claims to care about the rest of Iron Riot and maybe you could say there is some degree of backing that up at the end of the book but he spends basically the entire book either directly bossing them around (because he's so insanely smart and they're all stupid and 1000% screwed without him and his giant amazing brain. Conceited much?) or manipulating them into doing what he wants. He talks about other people's emotions the way most of us talk about our taxes; like some sort of unpleasant and tedious fact of life that occasionally needs to be given the correct inputs so that it stops being a headache. It reminds me of the scene from Terminator 2 (or maybe 3 I don't remember) where the robot intentionally pisses off young John Connor because it determines anger is a more useful emotion to have than sorrow. The robot absolutely does not care about John and is explicitly manipulating his emotions to get John into the best possible state to achieve the robot's goals. Martin reminds me of that robot.
If you somehow manage to miss how much Martin sucks, the action will frequently pause to have Jericho remind everyone about exactly how he sucks. Jericho has always had an, at best, rocky relationship with Martin. Jericho blames Martin for getting the group trapped in the game and is justifiably very unhappy about this. I'm on team Jericho here. It absolutely is Martin’s fault they're trapped and the idea that Martin sees his “friends” as anything other than tools is difficult to accept.
If you aren't reading through this repeated argument for the third time you'll instead be reading one of a dozen interchangeable fight scenes against random monster #23,842. In fairness it is a series about trying to kill one hundred dungeon floors full of monsters so a fair bit of killing monsters is expected but it does get a tad bit tedious to see the group drop into a new floor of the dungeon and methodically go about slaughtering it the same way they did the last handful of floors. Sure the scenery and the monsters charge but there's only so many ways to say Martin used his magic sword to stab a thing.
Another issue is that even given the sheer amount of thing-stabbing that does occur, most readers will quickly realize that there's simply no way the group can get through everything in the amount of time they've got. I mean this both in the book and on a narrative level. It took several days for the characters and two entire novels for us to get less than half way through the dungeon and the dungeon is supposed to get harder and harder as they go which would presumably mean the progress would slow down. Given all of this it's inevitable that some sort of skip is simply going to have to occur. That might be an in-world thing or Penman starting a chapter by saying something along the lines of “then they tried really really hard and cleared the next 40 floors in record time.” Either one of these two things happens or they don't get to the bottom. I won't spoil what does happen but the issue is that none of these are particularly appealing options. If they fail to get there then the ending is just everybody dies and that's a pretty trash ending. But if they do get there and we skip some massive amount of the dungeon then it will feel unearned for them to have gotten there. It's really kind of a no win situation. I won't spoil it but what does end up happening… well it's likely to leave a good number of readers unsatisfied, myself included.
It's not an altogether bad book. It does provide closure and if you enjoy killing monsters there's certainly a lot of that but unfortunately there are a number of issues that make it difficult to recommend. I still think book one of the series is great but books two and three are, at least to my way of thinking, steps down.
Setting:
This book takes place entirely within the “game” of Strata that readers will be quite familiar with by this point.
Characters:
Martin: Martin is now fully committed to the goal of getting to the end of the dungeon. He has always wanted to win, to prove his mental superiority and gain the ability to gloat about the size of his e-peen, but now his very existence is dependent on winning.
Lindsay: Lindsay is the least affected by the difficult position the group finds themselves in. She continues to crack jokes and, as much as possible, enjoys the game.
Jericho: Jericho continues to be standoffish. He's understandably very angry about being stuck in the game and is protective of Julia.
Julia: Julia is largely depressed about the entire scenario.
Plot:
Martin and company have had their ability to logout from the game taken away. They can’t stop playing. In an uncomfortably small amount of time, dehydration and starvation will begin to damage their real life bodies. Martin believes, and convinces the group, that their only hope is to push down through the remaining floors of the dungeon and kill the final boss. The instant notoriety of doing this will make them unignorable. The game masters won’t be able to simply make them disappear and will have to let them out. The group however has a tremendous amount of the dungeon left. Is there any hope of clearing all of it in time?
My Thoughts:
This review will talk about this book specifically but will also talk a bit about the series as a whole.
Ultimately Heart is a somewhat lackluster conclusion to a series that started well and made, at least for my money, a questionable choice in book two. In book two it’s shown to Martin, and by extension the reader, that Strata Online is no mere game. Starta is revealed, or at least extremely heavily suggested, to be… some sort of manifestation of the collective unconscious or an alternate reality or another dimension or… some other such complicated mumbo jumbo. The titular Heart of Strata is therefore a god of sorts and killing it would in theory irreparably damage or entirely destroy the world of Strata.
LitRPG novels always wind up with the question of how to make both the game world and the real world meaningfully important to the story and various authors have solved that in various ways. While Penman certainly gets points for originality, it doesn't feel like it really works. The developers found some sort of other reality and a means by which to go there and instead of mentioning how they made the greatest discovery in the entire history of mankind they made a video game out of it??? Even beyond that first point the developer’s behavior is extremely confusing. The developers would have had to have at least some degree of awareness of the strangeness here given that many NPCs in the game are, apparently, the lingering consciousnesses of former dead players and this cannot have been coded and definitely would have been noticed. And they were just like cool with that? The developers saw dead play testers getting stuck in the game and going insane and just… thought that was okay? “Oh nice we don't have to code a merchant for this town cause Frank's tortured ghost is doing it for us. Sweet, I can clock out early this week.” Is that how it went down? None of this makes any sense. I guess if I'm really trying to explain this you could argue that there's some sort of ultra greedy rich pile of trash who doesn't care about science at all and thought the best way to monetize this alternate reality was a video game. I cannot even begin to fathom what lead to that line of thinking but we'll go with it. From there, anyone who raised concerns about this being morally wrong or generally stupid was just killed because the developers are all evil. Maybe that's a tolerable excuse but it doesn't feel like I should have to do this kind of reaching for a justification.
Unfortunately the problems don't end there. Martin as a main character is generally unlikable throughout the entire series and in this book in particular. He claims to care about the rest of Iron Riot and maybe you could say there is some degree of backing that up at the end of the book but he spends basically the entire book either directly bossing them around (because he's so insanely smart and they're all stupid and 1000% screwed without him and his giant amazing brain. Conceited much?) or manipulating them into doing what he wants. He talks about other people's emotions the way most of us talk about our taxes; like some sort of unpleasant and tedious fact of life that occasionally needs to be given the correct inputs so that it stops being a headache. It reminds me of the scene from Terminator 2 (or maybe 3 I don't remember) where the robot intentionally pisses off young John Connor because it determines anger is a more useful emotion to have than sorrow. The robot absolutely does not care about John and is explicitly manipulating his emotions to get John into the best possible state to achieve the robot's goals. Martin reminds me of that robot.
If you somehow manage to miss how much Martin sucks, the action will frequently pause to have Jericho remind everyone about exactly how he sucks. Jericho has always had an, at best, rocky relationship with Martin. Jericho blames Martin for getting the group trapped in the game and is justifiably very unhappy about this. I'm on team Jericho here. It absolutely is Martin’s fault they're trapped and the idea that Martin sees his “friends” as anything other than tools is difficult to accept.
If you aren't reading through this repeated argument for the third time you'll instead be reading one of a dozen interchangeable fight scenes against random monster #23,842. In fairness it is a series about trying to kill one hundred dungeon floors full of monsters so a fair bit of killing monsters is expected but it does get a tad bit tedious to see the group drop into a new floor of the dungeon and methodically go about slaughtering it the same way they did the last handful of floors. Sure the scenery and the monsters charge but there's only so many ways to say Martin used his magic sword to stab a thing.
Another issue is that even given the sheer amount of thing-stabbing that does occur, most readers will quickly realize that there's simply no way the group can get through everything in the amount of time they've got. I mean this both in the book and on a narrative level. It took several days for the characters and two entire novels for us to get less than half way through the dungeon and the dungeon is supposed to get harder and harder as they go which would presumably mean the progress would slow down. Given all of this it's inevitable that some sort of skip is simply going to have to occur. That might be an in-world thing or Penman starting a chapter by saying something along the lines of “then they tried really really hard and cleared the next 40 floors in record time.” Either one of these two things happens or they don't get to the bottom. I won't spoil what does happen but the issue is that none of these are particularly appealing options. If they fail to get there then the ending is just everybody dies and that's a pretty trash ending. But if they do get there and we skip some massive amount of the dungeon then it will feel unearned for them to have gotten there. It's really kind of a no win situation. I won't spoil it but what does end up happening… well it's likely to leave a good number of readers unsatisfied, myself included.
It's not an altogether bad book. It does provide closure and if you enjoy killing monsters there's certainly a lot of that but unfortunately there are a number of issues that make it difficult to recommend. I still think book one of the series is great but books two and three are, at least to my way of thinking, steps down.
October 2, 2024
It just ends
No denouement. It just ends. The author did the impossible with pushing them to the very end, although there were no clear markers of overall progress beyond the length of the book, making the whole thing feel nebulous. They use every trick in the book masterfully. But then, it just ends. Unsatisfyingly.
No denouement. It just ends. The author did the impossible with pushing them to the very end, although there were no clear markers of overall progress beyond the length of the book, making the whole thing feel nebulous. They use every trick in the book masterfully. But then, it just ends. Unsatisfyingly.
November 3, 2024
Heart of Strata is the final book in G.D. Penman’s Deepest Dungeon trilogy. The story follows Martin and his guild, Iron Riot, as they race to the bottom of Strata before they run out of time. While this final book was a page turner, I didn’t love this final book. I found the book to have an unsatisfying ending and was not the biggest fan of the majority of the book being fight scenes.
First, I’d like to talk about character growth. In terms of Martin, I’m not sure there is much over the novel. Given how the books end, I really would have loved to see a gradual change in his perspective or desires as the book progressed. Instead, Martin’s choice at the end of the book felt a bit out of nowhere, and was really a let down for me.
The other characters don’t really provide much character development either. There was a good scene with Jericho and Marin acknowledging their uneasy friendship that I enjoyed a lot. However, while the book hints at more there between Julia and Martin and their past, it’s never brought up and discussed. I ultimately found this book, like the previous book, rather allergic to letting there be character development.
The book poses an initial dilemma – with only two to three days to beat the game and only having traversed less than half the dungeon, how can Martin and his companions get to the end in time? In practicality for the novel, it involves a lot of fights. And while I enjoy a good battle scene and liked the scripting of the two Archduke battles, there were a lot of fight scenes. Part of this is compounded by the relentless pace of Martin and his allies needing to push through the dungeon as fast as they possibly can. I wish the book had allowed for more rest of time to breathe, or that there hadn’t been the plot device of the players having to beat the game before their bodies die in real life.
Ultimately, I like the premise of the series and enjoyed Martin and Iron Riot in their investigations and questing through Strata. I with the plotting of the series was different, and that the second book hadn’t forced the third book to be constrained by this race against time. Finally, my dislike of the ending really colors my view of the series unfortunately.
First, I’d like to talk about character growth. In terms of Martin, I’m not sure there is much over the novel. Given how the books end, I really would have loved to see a gradual change in his perspective or desires as the book progressed. Instead, Martin’s choice at the end of the book felt a bit out of nowhere, and was really a let down for me.
The other characters don’t really provide much character development either. There was a good scene with Jericho and Marin acknowledging their uneasy friendship that I enjoyed a lot. However, while the book hints at more there between Julia and Martin and their past, it’s never brought up and discussed. I ultimately found this book, like the previous book, rather allergic to letting there be character development.
The book poses an initial dilemma – with only two to three days to beat the game and only having traversed less than half the dungeon, how can Martin and his companions get to the end in time? In practicality for the novel, it involves a lot of fights. And while I enjoy a good battle scene and liked the scripting of the two Archduke battles, there were a lot of fight scenes. Part of this is compounded by the relentless pace of Martin and his allies needing to push through the dungeon as fast as they possibly can. I wish the book had allowed for more rest of time to breathe, or that there hadn’t been the plot device of the players having to beat the game before their bodies die in real life.
Ultimately, I like the premise of the series and enjoyed Martin and Iron Riot in their investigations and questing through Strata. I with the plotting of the series was different, and that the second book hadn’t forced the third book to be constrained by this race against time. Finally, my dislike of the ending really colors my view of the series unfortunately.
August 22, 2024
Kinda more of the same as the second book in the series, although this one contains a bit more character development. Although I do thoroughly enjoy the dungeon world and the monsters created by the author, I felt so frustrated at the lack of proper progress in the story.
Basically, the gang has 2 days to get through... (it isn't even mentioned clearly) about 60-70 floors to get to the Heart before they die in real life. The plan? There is none. Just keep going at a snail's pace. Or so we're told for a solid 80% of the story.
- They get an unexpected lift by
- This still leaves them half of the dungeon to go!
- The one thing that pissed me off the most BY FAR is
-
- Typo ("But beyond that, you're guess is as good as mine.")
Although I didn't like how sudden the ending dropped from the sky- literally,- I did really enjoy the Finale. It's a poetic bitter sweet ending for the story.
I remain convinced that
I guess I'm overthinking. The story definitely has its ups and downs, but overall I'm glad I read them. The first one is the best.
Basically, the gang has 2 days to get through... (it isn't even mentioned clearly) about 60-70 floors to get to the Heart before they die in real life. The plan? There is none. Just keep going at a snail's pace. Or so we're told for a solid 80% of the story.
- They get an unexpected lift by
- This still leaves them half of the dungeon to go!
- The one thing that pissed me off the most BY FAR is
-
- Typo ("But beyond that, you're guess is as good as mine.")
Although I didn't like how sudden the ending dropped from the sky- literally,- I did really enjoy the Finale. It's a poetic bitter sweet ending for the story.
I remain convinced that
I guess I'm overthinking. The story definitely has its ups and downs, but overall I'm glad I read them. The first one is the best.
December 17, 2023
Not bad, but not great either. Basically no character development over the series, not for the MC nor the supporting characters.
Feels like the author just wanted to wrap up the series so rushed the ending.
Feels like the author just wanted to wrap up the series so rushed the ending.
January 26, 2025
I loved everything about this series. Well written, plenty of action, an overall fun read. Cover art kicks ass too. The narrator did a great job bringing the characters to life. Not too chunky on game stats, which I liked.
December 23, 2023
Enjoyed it
Didn’t like it as much as the first two, felt a little rushed to finish the Dungeon. But overall great series and looking forward to hopefully see what happens now.
Didn’t like it as much as the first two, felt a little rushed to finish the Dungeon. But overall great series and looking forward to hopefully see what happens now.
January 10, 2024
Great addition or ending not sure
January 28, 2026
as someone who loves gaming and reading pretty much equally I really enjoyed the setting of Strata and Martin being such a calculated gamer :D
the ending is in my opinion not rushed but rather very plausible and I dont think I would have enjoyed any other option as much
10/10 will recommend to any gamer that wants to start reading or already is a bookworm
the ending is in my opinion not rushed but rather very plausible and I dont think I would have enjoyed any other option as much
10/10 will recommend to any gamer that wants to start reading or already is a bookworm
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews