God of Gnomes

God of Gnomes, Book 1

By: Demi Harper

Narrated by: Adam Sims

Length: 13 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's summary

What kind of god would you be? Deep beneath the earth, Corey finds himself reborn as a God Core - a sentient crystal with unusual powers. His new worshippers? A colony of incompetent gnomes, scratching out an existence in their underground grotto.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Corey soon realises that his gnome denizens are about to become extinct. They are threatened by groups of blundering adventurers and abducted by raiding kobolds to be sacrificed to their own dark god: an ancient, mysterious foe who does not take kindly to Corey’s arrival.

With the aid of his helper sprite and a menagerie of newly evolved creatures, Corey must protect and guide his gnomes until they can stand on their own two feet. But the kobold army is on the march, led by his new rival’s powerful avatar.

It’s a hard rock life, being a God Core. Inspired by the god sims such as Black & White, dungeon managers like Dungeon Keeper and civ builders like Age of Empires, God of Gnomes is the first in a new generation of LitRPG and Dungeon Core stories - God Core.

©2019 L M Hughes (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

It gets better, but never gets great

The book starts very weak, with an unlikeable main character and constant info dumps. It does get better but never gets to be amazing. I finished it but am not planning on reading book 2.

Be Kind To Yourself, Get this book.

Let me begin this review by saying I'm familiar and a fan of Dungeon Core series, However this is so much more than that.

God of Gnomes rewards you for your previous fantasy knowledge without making you feel left out for not knowing it.

Pros:
Engaging story
Likeable civilization the god core rules over.
Understandable powers.
NO STAT SHEETS! (Even in fantasy Dungeon Core these are far too common)

Pro/Con:
Very few talking characters so the voices for each are very distinct.
Most of the story is the litteral gods eye view of a civilization.
This is a small story never reaching farther than a large cave in a small part of the world. Not much outside lore is told or needed.

Cons:
The reason in the middle of the book for making our two protagonists split up feels a bit... forced to say the least. Dealing with a species I.E. cores, whom many can be evil, simply calling something an "Evil Race" feels a bit out of character for who this scares away.

Seriously, it's engaging and interesting, I was just as on my seat about different villagers possibly dying or being in danger as the titular god of gnomes. If you like the civilization building parts of 4X videogames and have a respect for the little things, you'll be doing yourself a disservice if you do not pick this up.

Good Story.

Honestly I almost stopped listening in the first 10-15 chapters because of the MC’s attitude, but I held out till the end and I am happy to say that the back half of the story made up for the rough start.
I am looking forward to listening to the next book when it comes out.

It was fun

The story was good. it reminded me of playing civilization or sims. the main issue I had with this was lack of characters, it's just the core, the wisp, and the antagonist (for the most part). While I enjoyed the voice of the antagonist, the wisp's voice is grating and can be hard to listen to. The core voice is fine, nothing special. overall it's pretty fun.

Gnomes

I really enjoyed this book. The narrator did an excellent job and really brought a lot of personality to Corey through vocal intonation. The character starts off kind of sulky and uncaring and you hear them evolve over time through the narration.
As a long time fan of Dakota Krout, I loved the reference to Dungeon Born and it reminded me a lot of that book, but less punny and more serious. Like I was seriously saddened by the losses incurred throughout the battles with the other core, Grimrock.
I also thought the limitations on Corey added a lot to the drama throughout. Even though Corey is a God core, he can only create so many monsters and not quickly.
As soon as I finished this one I bought the next book and can't wait to see what happens next. :)

A refreshingly different approach to dungeon core

Dungeon core tends to be repetitive and derivative. This managers to stay true to the genre while bringing something different.

its ok

it's ok and that is the best I can say about it. Much better books out there wouldn't buy it again but not bad enough that I will return it

Couldn’t put it down!

I really enjoyed this book! Author and narrator together made this book a joy to listen to. I finished it in a day and a half and was sorry to reach the end. Hopefully a sequel isn’t too far behind.

The Story was very well played

Looking forward to more with the series. Very well written and the performance was wonderful

Padded to frustrating levels early on

You know that old trick when padding out the wordcount in an essay where you just add as many unnecessary words and redundant sentences as possible? That describes this entire book.

Just an example exchange.

"You have 24 creation slots."

"huh"

"explanation, punctuated by him interrupting and being scolded for interrupting. "

"why 24?"

"Your creation slots you mean?"

On top of this the main character pointlessly stalls and drags his feet over every little detail. So every step in the story requires a lengthy and exhaustive look into why its necessary. Twice because he'll go into some tangent about why this is all beneath him after the explanation prompting a full repeat of the explanation.

So you can't really get into the building process.
Which might be a good thing, because the story fails to do the one essential thing any kind of story needs but a litrpg needs most of all. It fails to give the character agency. There are no choices, no skill trees, no nothing.

Here is the pattern to the whole book, paraphrased with padding removed.

Helper Sprite: "Use your new ability"

MC:"Waaah I dont wanna!"

Helper Sprite "You gotta"

MC: "Fine!"

*MC doea the thing, MC levels up, MC gets one more new auromatically assigned ability.*

Helper Sprite: "Use your new ability"

MC:"Waaah I dont wanna!"

Rinse and repeat.

It does eventually get better, once he is pass the leveling phase and keeps improving until its probably even good. But first impressions....