Dungeon Born (Dramatized Adaptation)

The Divine Dungeon, Book 1

By: Dakota Krout

Narrated by: Amanda Forstrom, Christopher Walker, Danny Gavigan, Marni Penning, Nick DePinto, Terence Aselford, Mike Carnes, Mike Ciporkin, Ryan Haugen, Katie Boothe, Patrick Boylan

Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

A powerful dungeon. A sheep-herder turned Noble. Their path to ascendance through cultivation.

Conquering dungeons and using them to grow has long been the most efficient way to become a powerful adventurer. The only thing keeping the process from being easy is the Beasts that inhabit these places. Questions plague those entering this particular place of power: Where do the ‘rewards’ of weapons, armor, and heavy gold coins come from? Why is a fluffy bunny charging at me? For abyss-sake, why are there so many monsters?

Cal has all of the answers to these age-old questions for a very simple reason. He is a Dungeon Core, a soul forced against his will into a magical stone. With the help of an energetic friend, Cal grows a dungeon around himself to bring in new sources of power.

When a threat he doesn’t fully comprehend bares its many teeth, Cal is determined to survive the attempt on his life. Unfortunately for adventurers, the only way for him to achieve his goal is to eat anyone that enters his depths.

Performed by Patrick Boylan, Amanda Forstrom, Ryan Haugen, Danny Gavigan, Mike Carnes, Terence Aselford, Mike Ciporkin, Marni Penning, Nick DePinto, Katie Boothe, Christopher Walker, David Cui Cui, Eric Messner, Christopher Davenport, Michael John Casey, Matthew Bassett, Nora Achrati, Elias Khalil, Ryan Carlo Dalusung, Bradley Smith Rob Moreira, Anthony Palmini, Jessica Lauren Ball, Rayner Gabriel, James Konicek, Ken Jackson, Nanette Savard, and Scott McCormick.

©2019 Dakota Krout (P)2023 Graphic Audio LLC

It’s like meeting an old friend

This series was very open when I first read, after listening to it with graphic audio, it does feel a little different than from the original but I would not change it any other way. I hope part 2 is even wilder

great start!

The multi-cast combined with the soft music and effects brought new life to this series! Ican't wait to hear the adaptation of the next book!

Immersion

I've read the books, listened to the original audible audios, and now I've finished listening to the dramatized adaptations and I have to say, this was definitely the best experience.
Having the sound effects and music in the background, along with having multiple narrators for different characters really grabs you by the neck and sucks you into the story. I truly enjoyed it; from beginning to end.

*Slight spoiler incoming* A few reviews mentioned the reverb and the voice of the wisp were obnoxious or annoying, but it didn't seem distracting to me at all. I definitely support the effects that they added, as I think that they enhance the immersion.

There is one con, or constructive criticism, that was a bit bothersome: sometimes if a character was far away or whispering, the audio became nearly inaudible. this was especially prevalent when there is music playing. Luckily this only happens a few times.
Nevertheless, this story and performance were top tier!

reverb omg that's annoying

the reverb when the wisp is talking to Cali is teeth grinding. I get it he does not hear like others, but it's mind communication it's should not have that. other then that it's pretty good

Overdone production, get the full book instead

Through too much of the earlier chapters there was a tendency to have an ambient music scoring that NEVER felt right for the scene or discussion. This also made various parts had to hear. This was exasperated by some of the production that manipulated the actor’s voices to sound distant and hollow, like you were listening through a can. Some of the technique was okay at times, but one they added ambient sounds and music scoring, it was darn near impossible to follow. However the narrator was super loud. The voice actors were decent but the narrator was no where near that of the voiceover from the full book. That shortened aspect also took away from some of the book and story as a whole and was noticeable if you go through the full book. I would highly recommend the regular full book instead of this shortened, over produced, acted version.

Set speed to .9 for a good experience

This is one of my favorite series,and I appreciate the effort put into the dramatization and ill cover good points later, but the editing is poor.

I have minor hearing damage and cannot hear what is being said due to overly aggressive vocal modifications especially for Danny, one of the most common characters.

The base speed also takes away from the pacing. For instance, sometimes a sentence ends and another starts faster than the pauses between phonemes in some words. When Cal is talking it is best at a .9 speed but when its Dale perspective I thought .95 was better. I settled at .9 because at .95 I still struggled to understand Danny, the 3rd/4th most common voice.

There are also world breaking mess ups in performance. There is a scene where the first experience with a low level mage is ruined compared to the original audio book. You find out in later books that when people become mages they have to practice slowing down to seem normal, so all new mages seem weird and crazy. Its a fun aspect to the world and the original audio performance of this book that ads relisten value. Stuff like that really makes me sad because that extra 10% that made the original audio so good is missing.

However some of the added effects and full cast are nice. I love the performance by the new hans, i love that all the characters sound so different and feel a lot of characters are given more depth. At the slower speed I actually appreciate this more as more emotion and personality comes through and the slower speed doesnt take away at all. Some books i speed up on a relisten but even if I didn’t have hearing damage I would always listen to this at a slower speed to appreciate the background noise music and performances better.

The only performance I am really disappointed with is Danny and that is partially because the audio effect for her is too much and particularly because the original performance for Danny was so good. It was obviously a favorite character where as she fees like a forced character in this to some degree. She is okay but stacks up poorly in comparison.

Overall this was 95% of the way there and people who like there series will appreciate the added cast and effects especially if listened to at a slower speed. Its worth the buy especially if you listened to the original a half dozen times like I have and do want to listen to it again.

A great series returns

I made this purchase because i’m a long time fan of the series. Everything by Dakota really. I’m also a fan of Vikas Adam’s reading of the series. So I had a slight bias against a new reading. Admittedly the first chapter was hard to get through. For me this was mostly because the music went on too loud for too long. While I understood the vibe they were going for it became tedious listening. After that though it was relatively smooth sailing. I really enjoyed the dramatization. While I enjoy normal narration a dramatization is simply more. Like turning a 2D image into a 3D image. It was very enjoyable and I look forward to hearing the series fully dramatized. Though because i’m impatient I’m going to listen to the whole series again anyhow.

Really needs to tone down the reverb

The telepathy special effects really make it a struggle to understand Dani in particular, and I'd really like them to just edit the sound files with the reverb effect at like half what it is.

I was annoyed at some of the cuts they made, but enjoyed the performances.

The music volume could definitely do with some toning down, too, in parts. The music should never be louder than the voices, barring maybe a scene where the in-world background music is supposed to be drowning them out.

Return to the beginning

So, Dungeon Born was the original series that started my Dungeon Core collection. All the narrators did a fantastic job and hope for all to stay with the series till the last book.

I loved the book and the new audio is amazing

I really enjoy the divine dungeon series. The only reason I am giving the performance 4 stars is because I don’t agree with how they did Dannis voice. Besides that everything was amazing