This book is available on Amazon, and the author can be found on Twitter.
This is the second of the litRPG books I’ve reviewed this month. This second one being a “dungeon builder”. Yes, because everything in the world must be overly complicated, litRPG divides further into dungeon builders as a subgenre. What this means, essentially, is that it’s about a dungeon being built up over the course of the story. Usually the main character is either the dungeon master, demon king, or (as is this case) the dungeon itself. The light novel versions often use JRPG mechanics and ideas taken from that to build dungeons, but the western versions are usually either that or the Dungeons and Dragons variant. The cultivation elements are present, as in the character actively meditate to grow their powers and are actually called “Cultivators”. I’m less familiar with that genre though, so I can’t speak too much about it.
But enough about the genre/subgenre at this point. Let’s talk about Dungeon Born. This is the first book in the Divine Dungeon series. Honestly, I loved this book. It had the power scaling and leveling I love to see in books like this, with the added bonus of including traps, monster placement, and the layout of dungeons. It’s a lot of fun for me!
The story follows Cal, a dungeon core who becomes sentient of his existence. He’s a blue core, meaning he should have an affiliation with the water element, but for some reason he is able to consume other elements just as easily.
The second POV character is Dale. Dale is not as interesting, at first. But he grew on me as the story went on. His goal is to become skilled and a long-lived guild member. He buys the land the dungeon was found on, getting lucky because it was effectively worthless before they found it.
Dale grows and fights over time, but his story gets a little repetitive in the middle. Towards the end his story somehow becomes the most interesting part, but it was a mix before that.
Ultimately the real star of this story was the world building. My God, the world building is fantastically well thought out. Ideas that were presented in passing while explaining the world itself are revisited and some even become plot points (the very ending itself is an example of this). The ranking system is based on specific skills in the “magic” they use. It’s really complicated and I don’t want to write every facet of it, but it’s creative.
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You might like some of these other reviews:
Book Review: The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut
Book Review: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
Book Review: Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman
Light Novel Review: Reincarnated as a Sword by Yuu Tanaka
You may also like my work on writing:
Frank Ormond 
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