Dungeon Runner 1

Exploit, Extract, Exit!

By: Dustin Tigner

Narrated by: Jackie Meloche

Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's summary

Eighteen-year-old Entin Soroy was supposed to be the cogging best fighter pilot of the Garentin space colony. But after an unthinkable terrorist attack forced the colony to digitize to survive, he finds himself thrust into a world repurposed from a rushed video game: Eternal Fantasy Online. This new reality might be beautiful. It might be full of endless wonder for its new immortal inhabitants.

But the developers, in their haste, failed all those who lost their families and were too young to be given starting resources. Now Entin is a market Runner, working for copper chyps delivering packages to earn what little he can for the orphanage. It’s grueling, thankless work. That is, it was until a far more lucrative job found its way to him, revealing a new path forward. But nothing is ever easy.

There are risks involved with going into the Wilds, a place of monsters and dangerous mysteries. Is the loot worth it? What price will he have to pay to succeed where others have failed? Full of adventures, puzzles, and unusual paths to success, Dungeon Runner is a GameLit trilogy with a dash of cozy fantasy, found family, and friends.

©2023 Dustin Tigner (P)2023 Dreamscape Media

its ok though I am not target audience

I got this on whim, and well it doesn't always work out that I like my whim purchases. this isn't a bad book, I just don't think I'm the targeted demographic , its more of a young adult book (that's my opinion, feel free to judge for yourself). I just don't care for angsty, teenage crush drama.

Fun new twist on LitRPG

This was a fun read, with a very interesting premise. It was far more innocent than many LitRPGs out there and could be enjoyed by teen readers I think. The story was engaging though the structure did make it feel like it was just the prelude to something bigger. There was much more character development than in many LitRPGs I've read and I found myself really rooting for the characters. I'm looking forward to seeing how this develops in the upcoming books. The only negative I have is that the snippets of game guide that that were dropped in to explain the game system didn't work well in audio format, but there were only a few sections of these and they weren't terribly long.

A Fun Translation

Originally, I read this as individual short stories. I fell in love with the stories then, and hearing them fleshed out and recorded was a lot of fun.

Because of the nature of the first stories, I agree it isn't your typical first book, but the stories weave together well and even if it says you can skip the first book if you've read the short stories, I recommend listening to them. Jackie is great at what they do, and their voice only adds to the characters.

A fun time. Well worth the credit.

Really fun overall world building

I thought the characters were fun. Eizal’s story was more interesting to me than Entin (spelling?) but really enjoyed the world building for both.

Two Stories Entertwined

I had the honor of receiving an advanced copy of this book. But I did not have time to read it right away.
I'm sorry I waited so long. It was an interesting story, a group of runners that delivered packages around the city. Then they got tired of it because they were overworked and underappreciated. The second story is of a rich girl or used to be rich and trying to hide it that she is all this left of her family. She is not know her parents are except the entire book trying to find them.
I look forward to seeing. If she finds her family.

Interesting take on Isekai

I really appreciated the preference explaining that odd structure. I don’t think it would have detracted from my review significantly, but it did set a good mental model. Overall, I thought the book was really fun. I found the story intriguing and I wanted more from certain characters, some of the middle fluff about dev logs and such were quirky and probably read better in a physical book. However, they did not distract from the story. Overall, I thought the adventure was fun!