Dungeons & Dragons: Dungeon Academy: No Humans Allowed!

By: Madeleine Roux

Narrated by: Imani Parks

Length: 4 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

From New York Times best-selling author Madeleine Roux and acclaimed artist Tim Probert comes an all-new original Dungeons & Dragons middle-grade series!

Welcome to Dungeon Academy, where monsters and creatures train for the dark world that awaits just beyond the dungeon walls! But Zellidora “Zelli” Stormclash is a bit - different. She’s the one thing monsters and creatures of the Forgotten Realms fear the most: Zelli is a human!

Knowing she’ll never be accepted, Zelli’s parents disguise her as a minotaur in hopes she’ll blend with the academy’s monstrous surroundings. Zelli does her work, keeps to herself, and becomes “invisible” to everyone.

While in History of Horrible Humans class, Zelli learns of the great human adventurer Allidora Steelstrike, who oddly resembles her. Could Zelli also be a Steelstrike? Seeking answers to her true lineage, Zelli embarks on a dangerous adventure.

But she won’t be alone. A vegan owlbear, a cowardly kobold, and a shape-shifting mimic will join Zelli on her quest for truth in a world that holds no place for them. And who knows? Perhaps these monstrous misfits may discover some truths of their own....

Get ready for humor, heart, magic, and adventure as middle graders and beyond learn to embrace who they are, accept others' differences, and discover that making mistakes is okay - as long as you learn from them.

©2021 Madeleine Roux (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers

thumbs up

I really enjoyed this book. Even if you're not into Dungeons and Dragons, you'll still like the book but obviously knowing the D&D lingo makes it a little better.

Disappointing story with a good premise

I was very hopeful with the premise of this book: a human child in a monster academy set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe. However, the execution was clumsy at best. The writing, in particular the reason for the child to be at the dungeon academy, was amazingly poorly thought out from a writing point of view.
The performance of the voice actor was moderately disappointing as well. While she developed individual voices, for each of the characters that were distinct and matched, the characters personalities, intonation and expressive descriptions of what the characters were saying were rarely, if ever, utilized to produce the things the character said. For instance, whether a character was said to have screamed or whispered, the voice actor used a normal tone of voice.
All in all, the story had good potential and okay writing g with some significant missteps in both the story and performance hat led me to not want to read the rest of the series.

The whole book is boring

Everything about the book is terrible. The story barely makes sense. The reader is so monotone and so boring. It makes it impossible to listen to an overall it just is so bad...

Even my 5-year-old would hate this book.

I saw the other bad review before downloading. I tried really hard to get through the first chapter. I'm convinced it's impossible. The other reviewer did not do this justice. It's often said that bad Dungeon Masters should have wrote a book instead and saved everyone the time. In this case this woman should have read a book first.

Between the woefully inadequate understanding of dungeons & dragons and the extremely pedantic and patronizing tone of the author. It would seem as if she imagined her target audience to be first graders.

The author writes the monsters as if her only experience with dungeons & dragons is having skimmed the monster manual from 5th edition. Leaning into the tropes found in the first two sentences of flavor text. Again I'm left to assume she expects her target audience won't realize this because they are six years old.

Ignoring the fact that dungeons & dragons entirely inappropriate for what appears to be her targeted audience even they would be offended by the absolutely atrocious writing in this book.

If you are a fan of RPG lit don't waste your time on this absolute garbage. R.A. Salvatore is a better author than this woman. I honestly never thought I would be able to say that about anyone until now.

Slow and ridiculous

The story is ludicrous and does not honor D&D at all. A human can pass as a Minotaur? Despite not having a bull’s head or hooves or being big and has glued on horns? Nothing magical or special here. Story is slow. Writing is tough to get through. Maybe too cliché, maybe trying too hard? Skip! Voice actor sounds 12 and makes me sleepy.