Derelict

Book 1, Repel Boarders (A LitRPG, Dungeon Core Adventure)

By: Dean Henegar

Narrated by: Jack Voraces

Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

One captain’s death might turn out to be humanity’s best chance at survival.

As humanity expands into the stars, it discovers the universe is a hostile place.

When Captain Slater of the USS Franklin is assigned to a deep-space reconnaissance mission, his ship is destroyed by an unknown alien race.

Much to his surprise, Slater isn’t killed - he’s transformed. He is now a “derelict” - a consciousness bound to his old vessel. 

Slater must quickly adapt to his new existence before raiders, alien armies, and mysterious forces seek to destroy him for a second and final time.

©2020 Dean Henegar (P)2020 Dean Henegar

GAMER BOOK / CROSS COUNTRY

All in all this is a decent story. It would be great if you're a gamer because lots of the dialog sounds like someone in a video game.
Next odd thing is, what were the sound engineers thinking??? Okay, the whole book is about US Navy and US Army and USA stuff but they have a British guy reading it, putting various Great Britain accents on US military personnel. Very weird. Casting guys need to read the book or do a better job.
Caught myself ff thru the high pitch annoying gamer dialog of statistics for the derelict. Other than that it's a decent book but one of the few I'd recommend reading over listening to.

Disappointing but not Intolerable

I checked this series out because I liked the Limitless Lands series, but I didnt really appreciate that in this series the RPG elements of Limitless Lands had to be grafted onto reality, a task Dean fails at pretty miserably in a lot of spots. Plot holes are deliberately questioned by Slater (MC) and then deliberately given very unsatisfying answers by an entity (PIXIE) that itself is a plot hole. Particularly, any explanation involving the "Council" felt like Dean saying "because I want to tell it this way shut the heck up." Eventually I tuned out all explanations and this made the story shallow but tolerable.

Be ready to suspend every last scrap of your disbelief to make it through this.

Also Jack uses the same voices in all his books and they're getting grating. His "Imp" voice in particular needs some shades of variety.

no stupid mc

I have listen to alot of litrpg audiobooks and both the story + narration is really good.

I was first a little sceptical about the space genre and dungeon core mash-up but Dean Henegar really delivered!

Author is lazy and ignorant

The “Admiral” leading our manned fleet into the unknown is a pacifistist and a civilian JUST to show the contrast in the MC and him. It’s straight up ridiculous and pathetically lazy.

Original and Great Lit-RPG

When I was a teenager I played table top war games at my local comic book shop. One of my favorite was one that involved having a 4 man squad clear a space ship of xenos. Listening to this gave me pleasant flashback of playing in that comic book shop and all the fun I had. Definitely an original take on the dungeon core lit/rpg genre that is enjoyable and evolves into a very entertaining story. Jack Voraces, an amazing narrator, does an exceeding great job of putting you into the story and portrays each character distinctly with a great range of voices. This is one of my favorite lit/rpg of this year, worth a listen.

I received a free copy of this book for review purposes at my request, my review is voluntary and unbiased.

Painfully bad accents

I saw another review complain about the accents. I hoped once the captain had been transformed into the Derelict there wouldn’t be any other characters and I would saved from the painful narrator. Alas, no luck. Had to return this. I was curious to learn how this became LitRPG but the performance was impossible.

Fantastic

I enjoyed Dean Henegar's Limitless Land books, so I was excited to see a new series from him, and I wasn't disappointed!
This is a fun different take on dungeon core series, I'm very excited for the next book.

The narration is excellent as Jack just continues to improve, each performance is better than the last.

A total must have

This is a must have, it’s quite enjoyable, really a pleasure to listen to on a drive, though I found myself driving slower than I normally would simply to have more listening time for this, all in all 10/10 recommended for anyone interested in the LitRPG genre and anyone even remotely familiar to the Dungeon Core genre

Fun Story

I never thought of taking a video game and putting it to story!
Twas a great surprise to find it worked so well.

I think I should of read the book.

I hate to say this but the voice actor did not pair well with this book. Mostly due to limited voices, and poor inflections. Much of the time I couldn't tell a few characters apart.
Another point towards the voice actor. The opening quality of the audio is... Horrendous. How this level of quality was approved is beyond my understandable levels of professional. Now this does clear up, but as they say. It's the first impression that counts.
With that all said, the voice actors narration and added synthesized voices added some definition between characters that I enjoyed.

As for the story, it's not bad. (Shrugs)

Interesting take on a dungeon core book

The typical dungeon core happens on a planet BUT this book takes that idea one step further. This book is about a dunegon core in space! It brings both fantasy, litrpg and sci-fi together seemelessy!

This book is fun and engaging and the MC makes some interesting decisions. Its always a bonus when the MC has a brain! I really enjoyed this take of a dungeon core book and look forward to book 2!

Final note the narrator did a fantastic job with his character voices, he really brings the story alive!

cool concept marred by poor writing

I enjoy and I am familiar with the LitRPG genre and Dungeon core adventures but I am afraid I could not enjoy this book.

The writing is very simple (which is fine on its own) but so are the characters and their motivations. The characters hardly wonder what is going on, why they are doing what they are doing. The MC is supposed to be an honorable and moral space captain, is attacked by an unknown (alien?!) enemy but has no inclination to find out what happened to his crew, his fleet, his navy or even just any human beings.

The author often writes lines where the characters appear to 'reason' as if they were a 10 year old.
Example from chapter 8: 'The main character thought this made sense.' 'This makes sense' said the MC.

The author seems so enthralled by his idea of what a dungeon core is, that he has forgotten to build a world around it.
This enthrallment might be the reason the author seems to list the 'stats' of the dungeon after every small bit of progression.
'The MC found scrap! better list off all lvls, mobs, health, weapons of every item in the dungeon!'

The entire first three hours of the book feel like an mandatory unskipable tutorial cutscene in a dungeon keeper video game,
while the reader/listener is just waiting for something to happen. Then just as the MC is betrayed you hope this will propel the story into some kind of new direction, but NOPE, nothing even happens to the betrayer.

I just kept wanting the MC to explore, wonder about something, think about its situation or even display any real emotion.
The writing is not up to the task.

The narration is not great, but not what holds this title back.

I kind of want a refund of my credit point for this :\

Absolutely awful.

Within 2 minutes I junked this for a refund. Generic, amateur writing and the worst narration I have heard on Audible - a disgrace.

Surprisingly Addictive

Well I love my Sci Fi space opera’s. This is one to enjoy. The plot is uniquely fun, and very enjoyable. It feels open enough to get a good 7 books after. Let’s hope so. 😊

Good entry for the series

I should preface this by saying it was a gifted book from the narrator however the opinions are my own. Also possible spoilers.

I really enjoyed the book itself. It's a different take on the fantasy races as well as another LITRPG book that I can zone out to as I work. It's not to wordy and very easy to follow. If you enjoyed The Gam3 or System Apocalypse then chances are you will enjoy this.

For the narration I have super high standards and I think Jack Voraces does a good job. No one is going to be RC Bray however he is not boring and monotone like many audiobook narrators and I would check out both more of this series as well as anything else he does.

The best storyline I've heard in a long time

Dean henegar is one of my newest favourite authors I don't get much time to read books so I mostly have to use audiobooks within a car. loving sci-fi military and anything to do with dungeon core adventures this covered all the bases and threat to be a sublime as it was. and the voice acting from Jack was awesome really told the story was helped story unfold. I've now completed the book two and three. I can officially say I always wanted to hear the next book because they are so good also with Dean's military background using some of the military terminology and names of certain things which I do not want to say because I was spoilt it it was awesome idea.

Brilliant 👏 👏 👏

An amazing start to a unique dungen core LitRPG with a more space opera setting as the core is a space ship with the conscious of a previous soilder from the ship before it was turned.
Still includes your typical fantasy monsters but with a more futuristic setting.
Amazing narration as well.

A really good start to an epic story

I absolutely love the narration by Jack Voraces.
Also the story was something I've never seen before. Not even close.
Very unique and therefore very entertaining. Only let down for me is that it is very America focused (his choices on ship designs for example).

A Good Introduction to LitRPG

I actually really enjoyed this one.

This book starts off a little slow for my liking and doesn’t find its pace until later in the book but if you hear with it, you’re taken on a journey that unfolds and becomes is enjoyable to be on. This is my first LitRPG and one I did enjoy.

In some ways I found the stats readings interesting but also a little repetitive but thankfully they don’t happen too much. The story itself finds its groove and becomes captivating, and I really enjoyed the authors use of factual history in this book as inspiration for names. I thought the addition of that at the end really rounded it off nicely.

The narration was good, characters were given their own voices and personalities throughout and I enjoyed the performance overall.

I would recommend giving this a shot!

a good beginning

This is and interesting story with a different take on the genera. the narration while not in a style I usually choose fits the book well and I would happily listen to more from either the author or narrator.

I would happily suggest anyone who is interested in the genera give it a go