Mertho the wizard is betrayed, transformed into a living dungeon core. He feels the dark magic within him and still holds onto his humanity. But he must steal the souls of those who die in his dungeon to survive.
Tehra the cut-throat elven thief has hit rock bottom when she stumbles upon the bizarre dungeon core. She fears his dark magic until finding it might be used for good, and her own purposes.
Can Mertho learn to wield his new power without becoming evil? Will Tehra decide that murder is just if intentions are righteous? When true horrors threaten to enter the mortal realm, these unwitting anti-heroes might actually be the lesser of evils.
This is a dark fantasy novel inspired by old-school RPGs. Expect violence, heroes with ambiguous morals, and a whole lot of sword-and-sorcery, dungeon building adventure!
So this book kinda killed me. I was pretty bored until the last 10% of the book. I literally had to force myself to keep reading. If you are starting this looking for a dungeon book this might not be the best choice. While the main character is the dungeon core there is very little talk of true development. No real progression to track or look forward to with curiosity. He is a dungeon who makes a couple uninteresting things. The book is really about his relationships with some other characters. I also hated the constant guilt debate throughout the book. This is a bad dude so he should die, but if I kill him am I bad, but if I don't I allow his evil deeds to continue which would be bad, etc, etc. Overall, I found the book very lackluster and unoriginal.
The book seems to use gamelit and dungeon core solely as buzzwords to promote interest because it could never garner any on its own merits (of which, it has precisely none). It is some of the most bland and basic fantasy I have seen. The characters are all abominably dull and beyond stupid; as well the writing is dreadful and in dire need of an editing (not that an editor could save it). Abandon all hope ye who open these pages, naught but tedium and regret await you.
the quality of the boom dropped off sharply over the last few chapters, both in the story itself and the editing. This gem is from near the end of the book: "He won't get trying to help himself to a feel anytime soon, though."
This is a fun and engaging light read. There aren't any game mechanics or numbers to get in the way, just a good, fun plot.
This book's one detractor is that the author depended almost completely on spell check for his editing. There are many times when the wrong homonym is used (wreak instead of reek), or a word is missing a letter causing another word to appear in its place (part instead of party). It's not enough to make the book bad or unreadable, but it does pull you out briefly each time.
I thoroughly enjoyed this story with clever Descriptive plot scenes and delightful ethical dilemma instances different from the norm. The author has truly lavished attention on both the protagonist wizard and loved his nemesis in detail. The possibilities for further plotlines delivered in the next series of books is intriguing and I look forward to reading the following books.
This is bad but in the most boring, least interesting way. The biggest standout is that the author's kinda' terrible at characterization so the multiple chapters that exist solely to convey said characterization are filled with the most trite garbage. Frankly a LitRPG-style status screen that popped up and said 'The elf is now conflicted' would have at least saved some time.
The whole thing is poorly paced and extremely dull. Don't waste your time.
But it would be much better if it was edited better. Get two groups of, say five people. Let the first group read your work and point out mistakes. Fix those the first group found and pass the book to the second group of five. Repeat the process used with the first group. This process can work well instead of trying to do it yourself.
I had to push myself to finish this book. Good story but it really dragged. It just lost the focus on what story it was telling. It needs more editing.