
Dungeons of the Crooked Mountains
Underdog Series, Book 1
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Acheter pour 27,83 $
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Narrateur(s):
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Derek Shoales
À propos de cet audio
Eric was born in a world governed by the Great System, in the family of Aren Bergman, a respected miner from Orchus. But the joy of gaining a son was overshadowed by the newborn's terrible affliction. Eric was completely nulled-level zero and no characteristics points. The only things keeping him from dying were his tiny base supplies of "life" and "energy".
The medicine woman who delivered Eric believes this to be the work of the evil spirit, Bug. Due to the peculiar laws of the Great System, Eric cannot use experience essences or characteristics tablets, so he risks having to spend his whole life confined to a bed. But his father finds a solution. He takes out a large bank loan and goes to the capital where he buys a few artifacts of the Ancients on the black market, which have no level restriction.
Despite having the artifacts, Eric is still very feeble, and everyone in town thinks him a freak. But at least he can move on his own, and that gives the Bergmans hope. But alas, it isn't for long. On Eric's 14th birthday, his father and mother die in a mining accident. The bank takes their house, and Eric is left with no choice but to work off the remaining debt in the Dungeons of the Crooked Mountains. And so begins the story of a nulled boy's struggle to survive....
©2019 Alexey Osadchuk; English translation copyright 2019 by Andrew Schmitt (P)2019 TantorA Collection of Awesomeness
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RPG brought to life
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Ok, enough of that. My biggest gripe with this novel, is how the MC is portrayed. He is read as a teenager or possibly a young adult, but interacts with the world as a 5 year old. This wouldn't be bad, assuming that he actually IS a 5 year old. I'm not sure if his age was mentioned and I just missed it, or the author just glossed over the details when writing all the cringy backstory. The problem is that this novel clearly gives off the impression of being PG-16, or at the very least a PG-13 type of novel. So the MC behaving like a child fresh out of kindergarten is very, very, very annoying.
Something that also upset me pretty badly was the progression. There was absolutely zero progression or character development up until chapter 14. This was halfway through the entire first book! The author literally had the MC sloughing through mud for half the program doing nothing but reliving his miserable past, and equally dismal present. It took a whole 2 and a half hours on 2x speed just to get to the actual beginning of the book...Uhm yeah, maybe I should reduce the rating to 2 stars after all that...
The narrator was pretty good though. His job well done goes a long way to diminishing the novel's failings 👍.
Would I recommend this novel? Well, even with all the shortcommings, I would still recommend it. The idea behind the novel can somewhat make up for all the obvious nonsense at the start. This is of course providing that you can just ignore the brain-dead MC, turn off a portion of your brain 👀, and continue listening. Overall, I'd give this work 3/5 (mainly because of: premise, narrator's performance, action, and hope). I can only hope the 2nd book has a miracle going on for it 😪.
P.S. The system seems quite convoluted.
Main character needs an overhaul
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litrpg 4 the win
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I also want to say that I'm halfway into book 2 because I had hopes it would get better, but it never does.
Like the headline for this review, the whole book reads like a Young Adult novel, very simple use of words, very simple sentences and stuff like 'I would have never thought', 'when i heard ___ I immediately _____' , 'my heart was ready to jump out of my chest' used so often you can set your watch to it.
This is made worse by Derek Shoales performance, He exacerbate the Young Adult feel by over-acting every emotion and sentence in the book, PLEASE do yourself a favor by listening to the audio sample before buying this book. If I had thought to do so I would have never bought it, it's pretty terrible and never gets any better, even into the second book.
Reads like a Young Adult Novel, listen to sample!!
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Another great book!
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The game mechanics - involving loot drops of "experience essences" & "characteristics tablets" - are interesting but never really fleshed out, the characters are cookie-cutter predictable ("good" or "evil", with no "in between"), and nothing particularly attention-grabbing occurs.. even after the story FINALLY gets going in Chapter 13 (the action is well-scripted and cinematically described, but the pacing is subpar).
The limited vocabulary could potentially be blamed on translator Andrew Douglas Schmitt.. but regardless, the prose is amateurish (a high schooler in a Creative Writing class could have generated this book). I wasn't left impressed.
As to presentation: Reader Derek Shoales turns in a professional narration - backed up by exemplary technical support from Tantor Audio engineers - but doesn't help the situation by straight-up *performing* the text instead of reading it (and not very well - the breathlessly overacted action sequences are groanworthy, for example). This is an "average" exhibition overall.
Altogether, a sophomoric story coupled with a largely over-the-top cartoonish performance yields a 3/10-star audiobook. Your 10-year-old should really enjoy 'Dungeons Of The Crooked Mountains' - and I didn't HATE it as a 53-year-old Fantasy-SciFi fan - but even for free, there are better GameLit options to occupy your time.
Unsophisticated LitRPG
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Book 2 begins with him losing it all, it’s so hard to listen to… I’ll give book 2 a try, hopefully he levels up.
Slowww (Spoiler)
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