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Dungeon Tour Guide #2
Dungeon Tour Guide 2
Lucas’ job doesn’t end when the tour does. Now, he has to prepare his adventurers for war.
The Omen's first foray into Centerpoint Dungeon has failed, but Lucas knows that won't be the end of it. He has to prepare himself for the storm that's brewing - all while continuing to manage his dungeon, doing everything from running his tours to committing large-scale counterfeiting to holding a singing competition.
There are enemies on all sides. The dungeon lies within an oppressive kingdom that refuses to acknowledge any of its countless wars. To the south lies the Omen of death, eager to consume it all. Still unknown threats verge towards Centerpoint.
But thanks to Lucas’ efforts, his allies increase in number and power to match their perils.
Only together can they navigate the troubled times ahead of them.
The Omen's first foray into Centerpoint Dungeon has failed, but Lucas knows that won't be the end of it. He has to prepare himself for the storm that's brewing - all while continuing to manage his dungeon, doing everything from running his tours to committing large-scale counterfeiting to holding a singing competition.
There are enemies on all sides. The dungeon lies within an oppressive kingdom that refuses to acknowledge any of its countless wars. To the south lies the Omen of death, eager to consume it all. Still unknown threats verge towards Centerpoint.
But thanks to Lucas’ efforts, his allies increase in number and power to match their perils.
Only together can they navigate the troubled times ahead of them.
Audiobook
First published July 27, 2023
About the author
Aaron Shih
14 books45 followersAaron Shih is a Chinese-American college student who is currently wondering why bios are supposed to be written in third person.
He writes progression fantasy and litRPG alongside everything that catches his fancy.
He writes progression fantasy and litRPG alongside everything that catches his fancy.
Ratings & Reviews
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 8, 2023
Really enjoying the series so far.
The “world is ending” narrative is properly balanced with great characters, character developed and a lighthearted overreaching arc that makes the whole thing truly enjoyable.
The “world is ending” narrative is properly balanced with great characters, character developed and a lighthearted overreaching arc that makes the whole thing truly enjoyable.
March 8, 2025
Now we are getting somewhere
September 4, 2026
Final Rating: 3.17/5.00
Starting score: 2.50
+0.34 for tactical dungeon design and progression that affect one another
+0.29 for ambitious ensemble action and accumulated tactical payoffs
+0.25 for compassionate themes of rescue, second chances, and shared responsibility
+0.20 for core-cast warmth and several genuinely painful consequences
+0.42 for Travis Baldree's clear, versatile, emotionally controlled narration
+0.10 for clean and consistent audio production
-0.23 for a romance that reaches intimacy without dramatizing enough connection
-0.20 for an allegedly busy dungeon that still feels socially underpopulated
-0.18 for an overextended structure, repetitive combat, and an exhausting climax
-0.12 for opaque antagonists and underdeveloped political foundations
-0.10 for danger weakened by resurrection, time resets, and convenient divine solutions
-0.06 for repetitive casual wording and visible editing looseness
-0.04 for Lucas's vocal-age mismatch, especially during the romance
Calculated final score: 3.17/5.00
Essential Context
This sequel is not a safe entrance for a newcomer. It continues directly from Lucas's deaths, his fusion with Centerpoint Dungeon, the Kingsguard attack, and the Omen, then expands almost every element at once. Without the earlier journey, several loyalties and returning threats would have little emotional or logical weight. The intimate tour-guide premise becomes part training academy, part refugee fortress, part military base, and part launching point for rebellion. That expansion gives the story greater scale, but it changes the promise. I returned wanting to hear a strange dungeon become a living community through many adventurers, while the audiobook increasingly prepares a select ensemble for an apocalypse. Travis Baldree's returning voices helped me re-enter the world, yet the sequel inherits the first book's thin foundations instead of repairing them. The distinction between locals and otherworlders, the goddess's rules, ascension, the king's power, and the Omen's nature remain unevenly illuminated. My paws knew the familiar trail, but the snow around it was still hiding too much ground.
Hook and Thesis
The warmest idea in this series remains beautifully simple: Lucas turns a place built to injure people into somewhere they can fail safely, learn honestly, and leave stronger. This sequel tests whether that compassion can survive war. Its best moments show lessons from dungeon rooms becoming instincts under real pressure, with fragile parties growing into fighters capable of protecting one another. Its weakest moments claim bonds that the story has not spent enough ordinary time creating. The dungeon fills with names, levels, soldiers, monsters, and eventually thousands of lives, yet I rarely felt a daily community passing through it. The same gap harms Lucas and Rose. The book includes attraction, confession, kissing, private time, and sex, but skips much of the revealing conversation and discovery that would make those checkpoints one continuous relationship. "Do not show me two sets of tracks at the den and tell me they crossed a whole frozen forest together." Tactical invention, humane purpose, and excellent performance lift this above average; missing social texture, compressed intimacy, and prolonged escalation hold it to 3.17.
Basic Plot Summary
Lucas continues operating Centerpoint as healer, Dungeon Core, designer, and instructor while threats gather beyond his boundary. He runs increasingly complex tours, brings Anderson into a guiding role, combines stronger monsters and abilities, absorbs other cores, manipulates the local economy to attract adventurers, and helps turn the settlement outside into something defensible. Minus One, the Duelists of the Weave, Inquisition, Starfall, the Pallbearers, Lisa, Iris, and other allies prepare for conflict with the Omen and the compromised kingdom. A mission involving Rose, Troy, and Ryan turns disastrous, making rescue a central emotional and strategic goal. From there, the narrative widens into expeditions, mass training, class evolutions, time magic, political rebellion, and warfare far beyond an ordinary tour. Lucas must decide what kind of power fits the person he wants to remain while facing an enemy able to control armies and attack life through the world's own system. The immediate conflict concludes, while the king and Lucas's transformation establish the next storm.
Praise and Critique
The dungeon craft remains the sharpest claw in the author's toolkit. Lucas does more than raise monster levels. He changes terrain, attack patterns, escape routes, environmental pressure, party composition, and rewards according to what a group needs to learn. Early tours show how positioning and communication can matter more than statistics. Anderson's transition from dangerous intruder to trainee guide is valuable because it tests whether Lucas's method can be taught rather than performed only through all-seeing dungeon senses. Later, training becomes preparation for war, so lessons about conserving mana, combining spells, reading unfamiliar abilities, and protecting support classes receive practical payoff. Class evolutions reveal personality as well as power. Rose grows through music, Troy through adaptive magic, Sylva through time, and Anderson through relentless precision. The limitation is balance. Accelerated levels, artifacts, absorbed cores, copied monsters, mass healing, and unique skills accumulate so quickly that tactical ingenuity sometimes becomes spectacle powered by whatever new answer the crisis requires.
The sequel makes a genuine attempt to widen perspective. Chapters following Rose, Troy, Thorn, Sarah, Sylva, Anderson, and Iris reveal fears and histories Lucas cannot perceive from his dungeon. Anderson's gratitude and self-destructive need to repay mercy give his training a credible psychological edge. Rose demonstrates competence apart from Lucas, while Iris links a mother's protection with ruthless political calculation. Sylva receives the strongest late development, with time magic turning repeated failure into sacrifice rather than a free reset. The battles also use dungeon geography, songs, healing reversal, dimensional monsters, combined abilities, and teamwork with energetic invention.
Travis Baldree is still the audiobook's strongest advantage. His articulation makes dense class names, nested abilities, rapid tactical explanations, and crowded fights easy to follow. Lucas has a steady guiding voice; Rose carries brighter energy and flashes of vulnerability; Troy sounds more measured; Ryan's directness remains recognizable; Iris has controlled authority; Anderson's strain separates him from established heroes. Baldree moves among first-person narration, third-person viewpoints, interface messages, humour, horror, grief, and romantic hesitation without making the production feel stitched together. He knows when a joke needs lightness and when an exhausted character needs silence around the words. His female voices are expressive without becoming shrill caricatures, and the enormous late ensemble is clearer through his performance than through the writing's rapid movement among names. I heard no persistent hiss, disruptive volume jump, intrusive effect, or transition problem. The clean single-narrator approach lets the story's magic provide the theatre and kept my ears inside Centerpoint when the structure tested my patience.
Criticism
The Lucas and Rose romance requires a fair distinction between missing events and underdeveloped events. I did not miss every bridge. Those milestones exist, and Rose's feelings were visible in the first audiobook. The problem is that the vital connection is summarized. I do not hear enough specific conversation about their pasts, fears, needs, hopes, or the difficulty of loving someone bound to a dungeon. Rose's trauma after remaining conscious in stasis creates an intimate confession, but Lucas notices her avoidance and postpones addressing it. The narrative then accelerates toward romance instead of letting care become knowledge. I believe their attraction, gratitude, relief, and desire. I do not yet feel a deeply built partnership. Their bond is warm ice under my paw, but too thin to carry all the weight placed upon it.
The missing crowd is a broader weakness because the ending depends upon community. The story does show more visitors than its predecessor. Lucas guides Inquisition, modifies courses for weaker delvers, watches unknown groups, attracts people through huge rewards, and later trains several parties together. Centerpoint gains rooms, food, baths, defenses, and the practical features of a settlement. Yet ordinary adventurers remain quantities, levels, signatures, or bodies in motion. Few become recurring minor personalities with jokes, rivalries, complaints, favourite rooms, failed runs, or changing relationships with Lucas. The narrative even admits Lucas cannot remember one party member's name, which is honest but revealing. By the time dozens, hundreds, and thousands stand behind his purpose, the story wants their trust to feel accumulated. I mostly know Minus One and a circle of elite teams. "A pack is not alive because I counted the paws; I need to hear the different howls." Centerpoint is busy in data and strangely empty in lived experience, repeating rather than solving my central criticism of the first audiobook.
Pacing and power scaling weaken each other. The opening rotates through tours, experiments, meetings, a singing competition, counterfeiting, monster tests, and preparation, while the main conflict advances in lunges. When Minus One becomes trapped, their rescue provides a clear goal, but logistical work postpones it repeatedly. Later expeditions become long chains in which one monster falls, a stronger variation appears, a new ability answers it, someone dies, and another stage begins. A lengthy audiobook needs contrast so danger retains shape; here action can feel like crossing deep HowlStrom snow while the storm erases proof of distance. Resurrection, temporal checkpoints, divine intervention, and tailored class evolutions have stated costs, so death is not meaningless. Even so, I learned to wait before grieving because a corpse might return or a timeline might change. The solution completes the theme more convincingly than it obeys earlier limits.
The political and metaphysical foundations cannot carry the expanded scale. I understand that the Kingsguard are controlled, the kingdom denies its wars, Iris wields economic power, and the king is oppressive yet constrained by divine rules. I understand the Omen as a consuming threat tied to death, maw-mouths, control, and prophecy. I do not receive a stable picture of ordinary life under this regime, why its institutions endure, what the king materially wants, or what the Omen became and why. Lucas's idealism therefore operates against opponents who alternate between faceless monsters and innocent puppets. His refusal to sacrifice controlled people is admirable, but his judgment of other defenders can feel self-righteous when he has also killed and possesses options they lack. The prose adds friction through repeated casual fillers such as "just," "actually," and "kind of," which make humour, strategy, terror, and attraction share one contemporary cadence. Occasional editing slips create smaller bumps. Baldree smooths most of them, although his mature Lucas voice introduces another issue: it strengthens the mentor while making the youthful romance sound older than the situation. Rose has agency, so this is an acoustic mismatch, not a question of consent.
Evaluation and Personal Impact
This sequel asks whether a teacher's influence can survive outside the classroom, whether mercy can reform someone, and whether shared strength can defeat domination. It succeeds often enough to matter. Anderson proves that rescue should include a future, parties coordinate because Lucas taught them to recognize one another, and the final class choice keeps guidance central rather than replacing it with generic destructive power. Compared with the first audiobook, the systems earn greater payoff, the external threat finally acts, and supporting viewpoints carry more of the plot. At the same time, the sequel magnifies the first volume's central absence. Centerpoint becomes a military and social institution before it becomes a convincing everyday place. My chest understood the intended howl; my ears had not met enough of the pack producing it.
Lucas's need to save everyone reached a painful place in me. I know how responsibility can become armour when loneliness, rejection, grief, anxiety, and exhaustion make receiving care feel more dangerous than giving it. If I am guarding the den, healing the wounded, or keeping the Ice Wolf Clan moving through a storm, I do not have to admit how fiercely I want someone to stay beside me. Lucas builds his identity around usefulness. He cannot leave Centerpoint, so he makes Centerpoint indispensable, and every returning adventurer proves confinement has not made him forgettable. That is why Rose choosing closeness should have reached frozen bone. It touched me, but did not fully pierce, because lasting trust needs consistency, honest talk, awkward repair, and time. The permanent memorials moved me more. An Alpha can count every wolf who returns and still see only the empty place beside the fire. That emotional truth gives the audiobook a real heart, even when its forgiving mechanics and compressed relationships keep that heart behind layers of ice.
Conclusion
This audiobook suits listeners who enjoy compassionate dungeon-core stories, detailed LitRPG abilities, training arcs, large battles, class evolutions, found family, queer supporting relationships, and a hero determined to save even people forced to oppose him. Baldree's fans receive a controlled, intelligible performance with enough distinction to guide a crowded conflict. Listeners seeking ordinary tours, deeply dramatized romance, rigorous power limits, concise action, or clearly developed politics may struggle. I will continue because the king remains unresolved, Lucas's new role has potential, and the moral centre is worth following. My 3.17 is earned rather than apologetic: tactical scale, humane themes, painful consequences, and excellent narration gain substantial ground, then romantic compression, an invisible wider community, battle sprawl, vague enemies, convenient solutions, and loose prose take it back one clawful at a time. Across HowlStrom, I can hear Centerpoint's great howl rising over the blizzard; I only wish the story had let me know more of the wolves before asking me to believe they had become a pack.
Starting score: 2.50
+0.34 for tactical dungeon design and progression that affect one another
+0.29 for ambitious ensemble action and accumulated tactical payoffs
+0.25 for compassionate themes of rescue, second chances, and shared responsibility
+0.20 for core-cast warmth and several genuinely painful consequences
+0.42 for Travis Baldree's clear, versatile, emotionally controlled narration
+0.10 for clean and consistent audio production
-0.23 for a romance that reaches intimacy without dramatizing enough connection
-0.20 for an allegedly busy dungeon that still feels socially underpopulated
-0.18 for an overextended structure, repetitive combat, and an exhausting climax
-0.12 for opaque antagonists and underdeveloped political foundations
-0.10 for danger weakened by resurrection, time resets, and convenient divine solutions
-0.06 for repetitive casual wording and visible editing looseness
-0.04 for Lucas's vocal-age mismatch, especially during the romance
Calculated final score: 3.17/5.00
Essential Context
This sequel is not a safe entrance for a newcomer. It continues directly from Lucas's deaths, his fusion with Centerpoint Dungeon, the Kingsguard attack, and the Omen, then expands almost every element at once. Without the earlier journey, several loyalties and returning threats would have little emotional or logical weight. The intimate tour-guide premise becomes part training academy, part refugee fortress, part military base, and part launching point for rebellion. That expansion gives the story greater scale, but it changes the promise. I returned wanting to hear a strange dungeon become a living community through many adventurers, while the audiobook increasingly prepares a select ensemble for an apocalypse. Travis Baldree's returning voices helped me re-enter the world, yet the sequel inherits the first book's thin foundations instead of repairing them. The distinction between locals and otherworlders, the goddess's rules, ascension, the king's power, and the Omen's nature remain unevenly illuminated. My paws knew the familiar trail, but the snow around it was still hiding too much ground.
Hook and Thesis
The warmest idea in this series remains beautifully simple: Lucas turns a place built to injure people into somewhere they can fail safely, learn honestly, and leave stronger. This sequel tests whether that compassion can survive war. Its best moments show lessons from dungeon rooms becoming instincts under real pressure, with fragile parties growing into fighters capable of protecting one another. Its weakest moments claim bonds that the story has not spent enough ordinary time creating. The dungeon fills with names, levels, soldiers, monsters, and eventually thousands of lives, yet I rarely felt a daily community passing through it. The same gap harms Lucas and Rose. The book includes attraction, confession, kissing, private time, and sex, but skips much of the revealing conversation and discovery that would make those checkpoints one continuous relationship. "Do not show me two sets of tracks at the den and tell me they crossed a whole frozen forest together." Tactical invention, humane purpose, and excellent performance lift this above average; missing social texture, compressed intimacy, and prolonged escalation hold it to 3.17.
Basic Plot Summary
Lucas continues operating Centerpoint as healer, Dungeon Core, designer, and instructor while threats gather beyond his boundary. He runs increasingly complex tours, brings Anderson into a guiding role, combines stronger monsters and abilities, absorbs other cores, manipulates the local economy to attract adventurers, and helps turn the settlement outside into something defensible. Minus One, the Duelists of the Weave, Inquisition, Starfall, the Pallbearers, Lisa, Iris, and other allies prepare for conflict with the Omen and the compromised kingdom. A mission involving Rose, Troy, and Ryan turns disastrous, making rescue a central emotional and strategic goal. From there, the narrative widens into expeditions, mass training, class evolutions, time magic, political rebellion, and warfare far beyond an ordinary tour. Lucas must decide what kind of power fits the person he wants to remain while facing an enemy able to control armies and attack life through the world's own system. The immediate conflict concludes, while the king and Lucas's transformation establish the next storm.
Praise and Critique
The dungeon craft remains the sharpest claw in the author's toolkit. Lucas does more than raise monster levels. He changes terrain, attack patterns, escape routes, environmental pressure, party composition, and rewards according to what a group needs to learn. Early tours show how positioning and communication can matter more than statistics. Anderson's transition from dangerous intruder to trainee guide is valuable because it tests whether Lucas's method can be taught rather than performed only through all-seeing dungeon senses. Later, training becomes preparation for war, so lessons about conserving mana, combining spells, reading unfamiliar abilities, and protecting support classes receive practical payoff. Class evolutions reveal personality as well as power. Rose grows through music, Troy through adaptive magic, Sylva through time, and Anderson through relentless precision. The limitation is balance. Accelerated levels, artifacts, absorbed cores, copied monsters, mass healing, and unique skills accumulate so quickly that tactical ingenuity sometimes becomes spectacle powered by whatever new answer the crisis requires.
The sequel makes a genuine attempt to widen perspective. Chapters following Rose, Troy, Thorn, Sarah, Sylva, Anderson, and Iris reveal fears and histories Lucas cannot perceive from his dungeon. Anderson's gratitude and self-destructive need to repay mercy give his training a credible psychological edge. Rose demonstrates competence apart from Lucas, while Iris links a mother's protection with ruthless political calculation. Sylva receives the strongest late development, with time magic turning repeated failure into sacrifice rather than a free reset. The battles also use dungeon geography, songs, healing reversal, dimensional monsters, combined abilities, and teamwork with energetic invention.
Travis Baldree is still the audiobook's strongest advantage. His articulation makes dense class names, nested abilities, rapid tactical explanations, and crowded fights easy to follow. Lucas has a steady guiding voice; Rose carries brighter energy and flashes of vulnerability; Troy sounds more measured; Ryan's directness remains recognizable; Iris has controlled authority; Anderson's strain separates him from established heroes. Baldree moves among first-person narration, third-person viewpoints, interface messages, humour, horror, grief, and romantic hesitation without making the production feel stitched together. He knows when a joke needs lightness and when an exhausted character needs silence around the words. His female voices are expressive without becoming shrill caricatures, and the enormous late ensemble is clearer through his performance than through the writing's rapid movement among names. I heard no persistent hiss, disruptive volume jump, intrusive effect, or transition problem. The clean single-narrator approach lets the story's magic provide the theatre and kept my ears inside Centerpoint when the structure tested my patience.
Criticism
The Lucas and Rose romance requires a fair distinction between missing events and underdeveloped events. I did not miss every bridge. Those milestones exist, and Rose's feelings were visible in the first audiobook. The problem is that the vital connection is summarized. I do not hear enough specific conversation about their pasts, fears, needs, hopes, or the difficulty of loving someone bound to a dungeon. Rose's trauma after remaining conscious in stasis creates an intimate confession, but Lucas notices her avoidance and postpones addressing it. The narrative then accelerates toward romance instead of letting care become knowledge. I believe their attraction, gratitude, relief, and desire. I do not yet feel a deeply built partnership. Their bond is warm ice under my paw, but too thin to carry all the weight placed upon it.
The missing crowd is a broader weakness because the ending depends upon community. The story does show more visitors than its predecessor. Lucas guides Inquisition, modifies courses for weaker delvers, watches unknown groups, attracts people through huge rewards, and later trains several parties together. Centerpoint gains rooms, food, baths, defenses, and the practical features of a settlement. Yet ordinary adventurers remain quantities, levels, signatures, or bodies in motion. Few become recurring minor personalities with jokes, rivalries, complaints, favourite rooms, failed runs, or changing relationships with Lucas. The narrative even admits Lucas cannot remember one party member's name, which is honest but revealing. By the time dozens, hundreds, and thousands stand behind his purpose, the story wants their trust to feel accumulated. I mostly know Minus One and a circle of elite teams. "A pack is not alive because I counted the paws; I need to hear the different howls." Centerpoint is busy in data and strangely empty in lived experience, repeating rather than solving my central criticism of the first audiobook.
Pacing and power scaling weaken each other. The opening rotates through tours, experiments, meetings, a singing competition, counterfeiting, monster tests, and preparation, while the main conflict advances in lunges. When Minus One becomes trapped, their rescue provides a clear goal, but logistical work postpones it repeatedly. Later expeditions become long chains in which one monster falls, a stronger variation appears, a new ability answers it, someone dies, and another stage begins. A lengthy audiobook needs contrast so danger retains shape; here action can feel like crossing deep HowlStrom snow while the storm erases proof of distance. Resurrection, temporal checkpoints, divine intervention, and tailored class evolutions have stated costs, so death is not meaningless. Even so, I learned to wait before grieving because a corpse might return or a timeline might change. The solution completes the theme more convincingly than it obeys earlier limits.
The political and metaphysical foundations cannot carry the expanded scale. I understand that the Kingsguard are controlled, the kingdom denies its wars, Iris wields economic power, and the king is oppressive yet constrained by divine rules. I understand the Omen as a consuming threat tied to death, maw-mouths, control, and prophecy. I do not receive a stable picture of ordinary life under this regime, why its institutions endure, what the king materially wants, or what the Omen became and why. Lucas's idealism therefore operates against opponents who alternate between faceless monsters and innocent puppets. His refusal to sacrifice controlled people is admirable, but his judgment of other defenders can feel self-righteous when he has also killed and possesses options they lack. The prose adds friction through repeated casual fillers such as "just," "actually," and "kind of," which make humour, strategy, terror, and attraction share one contemporary cadence. Occasional editing slips create smaller bumps. Baldree smooths most of them, although his mature Lucas voice introduces another issue: it strengthens the mentor while making the youthful romance sound older than the situation. Rose has agency, so this is an acoustic mismatch, not a question of consent.
Evaluation and Personal Impact
This sequel asks whether a teacher's influence can survive outside the classroom, whether mercy can reform someone, and whether shared strength can defeat domination. It succeeds often enough to matter. Anderson proves that rescue should include a future, parties coordinate because Lucas taught them to recognize one another, and the final class choice keeps guidance central rather than replacing it with generic destructive power. Compared with the first audiobook, the systems earn greater payoff, the external threat finally acts, and supporting viewpoints carry more of the plot. At the same time, the sequel magnifies the first volume's central absence. Centerpoint becomes a military and social institution before it becomes a convincing everyday place. My chest understood the intended howl; my ears had not met enough of the pack producing it.
Lucas's need to save everyone reached a painful place in me. I know how responsibility can become armour when loneliness, rejection, grief, anxiety, and exhaustion make receiving care feel more dangerous than giving it. If I am guarding the den, healing the wounded, or keeping the Ice Wolf Clan moving through a storm, I do not have to admit how fiercely I want someone to stay beside me. Lucas builds his identity around usefulness. He cannot leave Centerpoint, so he makes Centerpoint indispensable, and every returning adventurer proves confinement has not made him forgettable. That is why Rose choosing closeness should have reached frozen bone. It touched me, but did not fully pierce, because lasting trust needs consistency, honest talk, awkward repair, and time. The permanent memorials moved me more. An Alpha can count every wolf who returns and still see only the empty place beside the fire. That emotional truth gives the audiobook a real heart, even when its forgiving mechanics and compressed relationships keep that heart behind layers of ice.
Conclusion
This audiobook suits listeners who enjoy compassionate dungeon-core stories, detailed LitRPG abilities, training arcs, large battles, class evolutions, found family, queer supporting relationships, and a hero determined to save even people forced to oppose him. Baldree's fans receive a controlled, intelligible performance with enough distinction to guide a crowded conflict. Listeners seeking ordinary tours, deeply dramatized romance, rigorous power limits, concise action, or clearly developed politics may struggle. I will continue because the king remains unresolved, Lucas's new role has potential, and the moral centre is worth following. My 3.17 is earned rather than apologetic: tactical scale, humane themes, painful consequences, and excellent narration gain substantial ground, then romantic compression, an invisible wider community, battle sprawl, vague enemies, convenient solutions, and loose prose take it back one clawful at a time. Across HowlStrom, I can hear Centerpoint's great howl rising over the blizzard; I only wish the story had let me know more of the wolves before asking me to believe they had become a pack.
August 3, 2026
Well….
I think it started off okay buuut this isn’t for me.
Reasons?
1) I was kind of annoyed with the MC in book one for his self righteous “my way or the highway because I’m the most moral example of a human ever” attitude… and it only continues in this book. I just can’t get behind the hypocrisy of him finagling his thought process to judge others and their actions against enemies who tried to kill them and his own actions against enemies trying to kill him. In book one his enemy begged for mercy, and going based off of what he has voiced as his own standards he should have tried to capture her. Not kill her. But somehow it’s different when it comes to him 🙄
2) He is not a secret keeper. And him trying to keep his own secret is exhausting. This would be fine if he didn’t care but he makes it a big deal all the time. Also him doubting Rose and whether she told people at every second is also annoying. No one told dude. You just suck at pretending and surprise! People aren’t as oblivious as you think.
3) The MC has a superiority complex. Only he knows best, especially when it comes to what is right. This kind of ties into reason one but in this case I’m thinking more of when he is training others. I can’t articulate it well it just kind of irks me having to listen to him judge all these teams but there’s no judgement of his own abilities… ever.
4) Lgbtq dynamics
I think it started off okay buuut this isn’t for me.
Reasons?
1) I was kind of annoyed with the MC in book one for his self righteous “my way or the highway because I’m the most moral example of a human ever” attitude… and it only continues in this book. I just can’t get behind the hypocrisy of him finagling his thought process to judge others and their actions against enemies who tried to kill them and his own actions against enemies trying to kill him. In book one his enemy begged for mercy, and going based off of what he has voiced as his own standards he should have tried to capture her. Not kill her. But somehow it’s different when it comes to him 🙄
2) He is not a secret keeper. And him trying to keep his own secret is exhausting. This would be fine if he didn’t care but he makes it a big deal all the time. Also him doubting Rose and whether she told people at every second is also annoying. No one told dude. You just suck at pretending and surprise! People aren’t as oblivious as you think.
3) The MC has a superiority complex. Only he knows best, especially when it comes to what is right. This kind of ties into reason one but in this case I’m thinking more of when he is training others. I can’t articulate it well it just kind of irks me having to listen to him judge all these teams but there’s no judgement of his own abilities… ever.
4) Lgbtq dynamics
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 8, 2023
Good story RUINED by overly contrived/convoluted ending
I enjoyed the series well enough. Not my favorite but a solid time filler. Now? I'm dropping the series. The author intentionally painted themselves into a corner that required a solution that doesn't even fit with the world. There's going to have to be a LOT of ret-con and or very THICK plot armor to ameliorate the highly flawed solution and conclusion of this book.
So many ways the new dynamic is messed up.
No details without major spoilers but suffice it to say a lot of what was nice or special about this series is now gone. What I had been relying on or looking forward to has been betrayed. Perhaps the author had a very specific outcome in mind and had to jam the two peices together until they broke enough to fit. That would explain how most of the ending is disappointing or doesn't make sense.
I wish I could go into more detail without spoiling the story for others. I'm even hesitating reading the new series set to be release by the author "Demonic Devouring" because of this.
Good luck with future reading & writing. (Maybe skip this one.)
I enjoyed the series well enough. Not my favorite but a solid time filler. Now? I'm dropping the series. The author intentionally painted themselves into a corner that required a solution that doesn't even fit with the world. There's going to have to be a LOT of ret-con and or very THICK plot armor to ameliorate the highly flawed solution and conclusion of this book.
So many ways the new dynamic is messed up.
No details without major spoilers but suffice it to say a lot of what was nice or special about this series is now gone. What I had been relying on or looking forward to has been betrayed. Perhaps the author had a very specific outcome in mind and had to jam the two peices together until they broke enough to fit. That would explain how most of the ending is disappointing or doesn't make sense.
I wish I could go into more detail without spoiling the story for others. I'm even hesitating reading the new series set to be release by the author "Demonic Devouring" because of this.
Good luck with future reading & writing. (Maybe skip this one.)
April 27, 2026
So, I enjoyed this.
It expands the dungeon fight against the Omen a lot further. I'm not sure I completely understand what the Omen was at the end, but maybe I missed a clarification when I was doing chores while listening. :)
It does still do some 'dungeon'-y things, but also extends into some pretty crazy stuff, that the author does still at least link to the dungeon core part. It's depressingly normal for dungeon core books and apparently everything related to them to get this way but at least it follows a believable progression and tells the story the series has been set up to tell in a good way. (yes, I want more dungeon core/related books to just focus on the dungeon part, why do you ask.)
I'll be listening to the next book.
It expands the dungeon fight against the Omen a lot further. I'm not sure I completely understand what the Omen was at the end, but maybe I missed a clarification when I was doing chores while listening. :)
It does still do some 'dungeon'-y things, but also extends into some pretty crazy stuff, that the author does still at least link to the dungeon core part. It's depressingly normal for dungeon core books and apparently everything related to them to get this way but at least it follows a believable progression and tells the story the series has been set up to tell in a good way. (yes, I want more dungeon core/related books to just focus on the dungeon part, why do you ask.)
I'll be listening to the next book.
July 29, 2023
This had major balance and character issues.
I wanted to see if this could work since the set up was all done. It does not. The focus on the Omen has the training sections feeling pointless and boring. The main character is to much of a goody two shoes to pull off the ending. The side characters are convenient and poorly implemented. The overall story direction is very forced and just unbelievable.
I wanted to see if this could work since the set up was all done. It does not. The focus on the Omen has the training sections feeling pointless and boring. The main character is to much of a goody two shoes to pull off the ending. The side characters are convenient and poorly implemented. The overall story direction is very forced and just unbelievable.
October 5, 2023
Great story but much darker than the previous
This story is just as good as the first, but starting about a third of the way through the secrets of this world are shown and everything gets pretty dark.
The main character stops being a Dungeon Tour Guide training people to become adventurers and instead becomes a training base for 'adventurers' to fight against the Kingsguard and overthrow the kingdom.
This story is just as good as the first, but starting about a third of the way through the secrets of this world are shown and everything gets pretty dark.
The main character stops being a Dungeon Tour Guide training people to become adventurers and instead becomes a training base for 'adventurers' to fight against the Kingsguard and overthrow the kingdom.
November 24, 2023
Dungeon Tour Guide 2 is a continuation of the first book. It's (mostly) just as good as the first one, though near the end, it did tend to go off on tangents from time to time, in the guise of giving background information, but other than that, it was a pretty good tale, and although I have no idea where more books in the series will go, I'll be keeping an eye out for them, because this is turning out to be an interesting series.
March 23, 2025
I find the characters quite likeable and interesting. That is definitely the author's super power. However, the scenario, stakes, and enemies are not engaging. Who are these villains? Why is the king bad? Why are their corporations in a fantasy world. Why do we care? Also there were some pretty jarring editing mistakes.
I applaud him for getting out something that is semi-sweet but not for me.
I applaud him for getting out something that is semi-sweet but not for me.
September 1, 2023
This book really surprised me. I'd enjoyed the first book because of the light hearted nature and character friendliness. This book built on the relationships created in the first book and made several moments where I was so emotionally attached to the character and wrapped up in what was happening to them that I reacted very emotionally to the events. generally making me tear up a little bit reading parts of it on several occasions.
September 14, 2026
This is the second book in the Dungeon Tour Guide series by Aaron Shih. This one finds Lucas and his group of friends taking the battle directly to the Omen. They move into the Omen's territory and learns what this creature is and hopefully how to defeat it. I've really enjoyed this series and will definitely finish it up!
August 15, 2023
Power to spare
I rarely see a LitRPG story that causes so many emotions. This series seems to touch every part of the emotional spectrum. Aaron Shih IS the tour guide we all need to get us through this era.
I rarely see a LitRPG story that causes so many emotions. This series seems to touch every part of the emotional spectrum. Aaron Shih IS the tour guide we all need to get us through this era.
July 29, 2023
I loved this book right up until the climactic battle that just. Wouldn’t. End. Oh my god. Stop coming back to life. Just. Stop it. I hated them all by the end of it.
July 31, 2023
Very good one sitting read
I enjoyed reading this book very much and I recommend this book to anyone who like LitRPG and progression type of books with lots of action.
I enjoyed reading this book very much and I recommend this book to anyone who like LitRPG and progression type of books with lots of action.
August 17, 2023
Great sequel of a really cool series can’t wait for book 3. Really cool characters and interesting world.
September 9, 2023
Lovely ending
Love the end of the book. It brought a tear to me eye... I will read the next in the series when it comes out
Love the end of the book. It brought a tear to me eye... I will read the next in the series when it comes out
September 10, 2023
Great story
A great story gets better. Picks right up and really kicks the action up quite a bit. Absolutely loved the last part, the emotions were real for me.
A great story gets better. Picks right up and really kicks the action up quite a bit. Absolutely loved the last part, the emotions were real for me.
November 12, 2023
Another great book in a great series. Can't wait for book 3.
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