Dungeon Engineer

The Fallen World, Book 1

By: Playwars aka Alex S. Weber

Narrated by: Mare Trevathan

They thought sacrificing her would further their own goals. Instead, they changed an engineer into the single most powerful fabricator in existence, a dungeon core.

Alexandra Rousseau, an engineer from the European Federation Star Navy with a past darker than the void between the stars, is unexpectedly launched into hyperspace when an FTL jump goes horribly wrong.

She wakes in a world of magic and monsters, encountering a mysterious Order with plans millennia in the making. When the Order makes a catastrophic mistake, transforming Alexandra into a dungeon core, they inadvertently give her the power to bring back technology long since thought lost in this world. With it, she'll make the Order pay and avenge the friends they've taken from her.

First, she must survive those who would steal her core for their own benefit while keeping her true identity a secret from the adventurers looking to delve into her dungeon. If they knew the truth, the Adventurer Guild would seek to end her, and the Order would stop at nothing to finish what they started…

©2022 Playwars aka Alex S. Weber (P)2023 Podium Audio

Considerably better than I could have hoped.

Within the LitRPG genre, I have found very few dungeon core books that were written with any real talent or craft. Most of them have been disappointing at best. Time-loop books represent the only other genre with a similar failure rate. There are just too many pitfalls for inexperienced authors in both of these genre’s.

With this in mind, I was pleasantly surprised by Dungeon Engineer. This book was well written and edited. More importantly, it didn’t get bogged down in dungeon mechanics and failed attempts at humor. The story was heavily character driven and weaves together several different plots in an effective manner.

If you are a GameLit fan but normally avoid Dungeon Core books for the reasons stated above then I recommend you give this one a shot. I am looking forward to the next installment.

Cool amazing review wow must read!!!

I thought it was pretty good and well read. The only annoying thing was the cry baby bits. I pretty much skipped those parts when it became too embarrassing for me.

Good dungeon core

I liked it, well written and good characters. Nothing bad to say about it reallly.

Very good...

Different and needed But this book is a build up for the series to come and the world building is done smoothly. The book is more of a 12 hour listen with a preview(Next book) and extra chapters for the last hour and half. No Harem which is a plus and Narration is flawless with Mare Narrating it!
I hope the next book comes out soon.

Great narrator, good start, decent premise, but altogether kind of a mess

This is my first foray into dungeon core so I have no other experience in the genre to compare to. Nonetheless, I can see the allure of building up a dungeon to test the grit and talent of adventurers. Unfortunately, this book doesn’t really have that. There are compelling characters and some potentially interesting world building, but regrettably it’s all over the place. The reader experiences a dramatic shift in genre, tone, and content following the prologue. I don’t mean insofar as shifting from a conventional isekai to dungeon core, but I mean insofar as the focus upon the protagonist diminishes significantly, the energy and progression of the plot drops from engaging to a meaning stumble, and the world building changes from measured and relevant to the immediate story to self-indulgent tangential walls of text. Far too much telling rather than showing. It’s almost as if e
Weber crafted a great prologue, then realized they needed to slow things down as well as artificially and arbitrarily nerf their protagonist Alex, while also somehow got bored of Alex and decided to focus on a host of side characters we have little reason to care about because it’s the first book and the person we want to spend the most time with Alex!

It’s frustrating. There’s a lot here that’s good. As the narrator, Mare Trevathan is fantastic. She vibrantly brings the book to life. Furthermore, I can tell Weber knows how to build worlds. I can tell that Weber knows how to do techno babble. I can tell that Weber knows how to create characters and relationships (to some extent). I can tell they can do action scenes too (again, to some extent). I can tell they have big plans for the series. But what Weber doesn’t seem able to do is edit themselves. All told, this first book is a bit of a mess spends too little time with our protagonist and progressing.

Maybe that changes over time. I can see there are several other books in this series but I find myself with little desire to continue listening if the rest of the series is constructed and executed in the same manner. Maybe you have the patience and tolerance for this, and if you do, you may very well be rewarded for sticking it out. At the moment, I’m going to have to think hard about whether I want to give the series another chance as I don’t want to have to slog through several books for the series to get good.

Imteresting to a point.

First part of the book was real good then it changed getting into the being a dungeon core part. Though i would like to know more of the tech but it not, its also magic which is confusing. Didnt get much in the dungeon building aspect of things, Or in the political intrigue brought on by the new land owners. This book left me wanting more but ended a little early before getting me interested in future events. And that christmas part idk what that was.

completely disappointing

The author is incredibly anticlimactic. Anything interesting or anticipated will always end in loss and disappointment. Implants? Sorry, all gone. Robots? Just kidding. Wait all book for a cannon? No sorry, that’ll be a crossbow.

If you want to read a dungeon core book, save yourself the credit, this isn’t it.

By the time I got into book 3 I realized this isn’t the advertised dungeon core book. Actually, it’s about some random assassin and their boring love life. I didn’t buy the book for random POVs, and i’m not exaggerating the dungeon POV is probably 30% of the book and it gets lower with each new book. There is no engineering, even in book 3 we’re having medieval tech. Wow balloons, so advanced!

I haven’t been this disappointed in a series in a really long time. It actually burnt me out in that way where you can barely make yourself read for a while because it’s so punishing and nauseating that disappointment suffuses your entire habit.

I really hated the long expositions about parts of the world it’s not possible for me to care about yet, or irrelevant and fake concepts which really aren’t part of the story. At least once a chapter there will be some wall of text about things like the continental map even when the story is in one city without any external factors.

Once I actually couldn’t stand any more of it, I went to RR where it originates and GR to see the whole review ecosystem and the story will continue in exactly this way forever, not being a dungeon core story and having no invention. It’s apparently really important to the author that the MC can’t make new and cool things and will always get shut down.

A good start to an interesting story

It started to an interesting story it shows a lot of promise and it's character Development shows great promise Should be interesting how the Handle of a lesbian aspect hopefully they don't miss handle it
.

The voice actor is a great character player.

I like the idea and the settings of the whole world. The main person is a little weak on combat from the hints that are throne out.

Great Start, Terrible Main Plot

There are two initial phases of this book before it transitions to the main dungeon core story, and I thought those were fantastic. The writing seemed intelligent and interesting, as did the characters. However, as soon as we entered the meat of the story, the dungeon core part, it was as if that section was written by the author's thirteen year old nephew. The main character's traits became self contradictory, the side characters were super boring, the dialogue was awkward, the story was boring, the magic system was ill conceived, the politics, economics, and business descriptions were unrealistic and poorly thought out, and really, the book just sucked. To make it worse, the engineer doesn't seem like she is able to actually engineer anything in her own dungeon, so the one potentially interesting part of the book, what we were promised in the summary, is nerfed. After reading the reviews for the sequel, it sounds like this, sadly, continues. What a terrible waste of a potentially awesome book.