People don’t spend anything like as much time talking about experience points or named skills. Where this book does have an edge over Bone Dungeon is that – while still very front-and-centre – there is a little bit more of a veil drawn over the video game mechanics in Dungeon Born. Characters are explicitly ranked and everyone is aware of the numeric gradings that seemingly govern everything. These are class Western Medieval fantasy worlds, focused around dungeon-diving and the pursuit of ever more powerful equipment: churches heal people, restaurants serve roast beast, and the Adventurers’ Guild is a power to be reckoned with.ĭungeon Born is a litRPG, with everything that comes with that. Magic is divided into broadly equivalent categories, and while the social makeup of the two settings varies a little (elves play a slightly greater role in Dungeon Born, for example), it’s all standard cookie-cutter fantasy in much the same vein as the first half of any Final Fantasy game. Other than a few minor differences in flavour, the two books could exist in the same world. In almost all the ways that matter, these stories are the same. Both rocks go through the same stages of spatial & emotional development, and both books slowly shift focus from the dungeon itself to a callow adventurer with a good heart, who eventually has to fight with the dungeon in order to face a greater threat.

Both focus on the flirtatious/symbiotic relationship between a male murder victim (now rock) and his sparkly female guide. Beat-for-beat, these books are near identical, and I doubt that my memories of the two will remain very distinct. I’m not saying that Bone Dungeon (published three years later) plagiarised Dungeon Born, just that both books exist in a genre that seemingly allows very little variation. Plot point by plot point and archetype by archetype, the books follow the exact same pattern. It’s not laziness though – honest – I just want to begin with the point that this book is incredibly similar to Jonathan Smidt’s Bone Dungeon. If the above paragraph sounds familiar to you, then thank you for being such a loyal & observant reader, and apologies for basically re-using the opening paragraph from another review. Paired with Dani, a will-o’-the-wisp, Cal sets about stocking his dungeon with monsters and traps so that he can consume incautious adventurers and grow his power. After being brutally murdered by necromancers, Cal returns to consciousness as a dungeon core – a sentient lump of rock with the power to shape its immediate surroundings.

Dungeon born dakota krout