The Crafter's Dungeon: A Dungeon Core Novel

Dungeon Crafting, Book 1

By: Jonathan Brooks

Narrated by: Louise Cooksey

Length: 9 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's Summary

Sandra had been a merchant traveling through the human lands of Muriel, though that wouldn’t have been her chosen profession. 

What she would’ve loved to become was a crafter, producing wondrous creations with her own two hands; however, she didn’t want to become a master in just one craft - she was interested in them all. 

Unfortunately, Sandra was born with a deformity in her hands that made them appear frozen in a claw-like pose; as a result, she couldn’t grip anything with any sort of strength or dexterity, meaning that she wasn’t able craft anything but the most simple of things that required very little in the way of hand-based manipulation. To top it off, while most people could access and manipulate at least one or two of the basic elemental energies, she could see them all - but was unable to manipulate a single one. 

Despite these setbacks, Sandra spent the majority of her 26 years of life visually learning the processes, techniques, and secret formulas for every aspect of crafting she could discover. And it was that pursuit of knowledge that ultimately led to her untimely death. 

Reborn in the shape of a tiny Dungeon Core, Sandra learned about the purpose behind dungeons and Cores from an assigned dungeon helper; at the same time, she also discovered that she had much more freedom than most other Dungeon Cores. 

The repercussions of her mere existence could end up being far-reaching, but the most important thing she learned had nothing to do with the other Cores, the different races, or even the real purpose behind her being brought back to life as a strange glowing gem. Sandra didn’t care about any of that, though - all she cared about was that she could finally do some crafting.

This Dungeon Core story contains LitRPG/GameLit elements such as statistics and leveling and a heavy crafting emphasis. No profanity and no harems.

©2019 Jonathan Brooks (P)2019 Jonathan Brooks

Completely excellent top notch Dungeon Core/ 1flaw

So I have listened to maybe a dozen of Jonathan Brooks books and they are all great, he tells a fun fast paced story and there is usually a few moral questions and a bunch of creative problem solving, it's always engrossing. Almost everything about book was fantastic. The reason he gets a 4star in story for this book is because of the material lists,

The crafting system at it's simplest form is a variety of material types ranging in sizes with a minimum and maximum mana capacity and a material cost combined with a creature type or item type to make a thing, and whenever the dungeon learn some new materials we get a list the reads something like this

"tiny copper orb minimum mana 10 maximum mana 25 material cost 50, small copper orb minimum mana 25 maximum mana 50 material cost 100, medium copper orb minimum mana 100 maximum mana 200 material cost large copper orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx,

tiny Silver orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx, small Silver orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx, medium Silver orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost large Silver orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx,

tiny gold orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx, small gold orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx, medium gold orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost large gold orb minimum mana xxx maximum mana xxx material cost xxx,"

etc ... for however many material have been accumulated,

This is the only real flaw with this book as an audio format, I am certain that in paper format this is a well organized chart that you can skim and if you want to can use as a reference chart and study in detail or skip over easily, but in audio it is a monotonous slog that you will find yourself trying to skip through until they get to the new pieces of information.

Like I said earlier everything else about this book is completely great, the narrator has pleasant voice, and good characterization, the characters themselves are interesting, and pretty likable, The story so far is winding up to be an involved political trade association through intermediary allies of the dungeon. It's going to be a blast,

Hopefully in the second book he'll abridge the entries or place them conveniently to be skipped

Decent story, poor narrator

The story in and of itself was pretty good. however, Cooksey, the narrator, made it unpleasant. pretty much any time she attempted to do any "voices" I cringed internally (sometimes externally too). she attempted to do them during any dialogue, unfortunately this made me start to detest any other characters besides the dungeon... well series have replaced narrators before, so I'll sleep my fingers crossed for this one's sequel!

Who hired her?

Listening to the horrible narration of Louise Cooksey just to get the great story nearly broke me. She places emphasis in the strangest places in a sentence whenever she is using a normal voice, and whenever she emphasizes the right words to match the context she does it in a voice that makes her sound like an uneducated valley girl asking her sugar daddy for money. After this travesty I know why the great Miles Meili was used for the dungeon fairy series even though the main character is female. I am terrified of the prospect of finishing this series in audio format.

TL:DR It sounds like the narrator is the untalented girlfriend of a member of the production company who used her other talents to get the job.

EDIT: OH GOD I was right! I looked through her other works to know what to stay away from, and guess what? The Sugar daddy analogy was spot on with a lot of her works being in a series called daddy's taboo 10 book bundle! Of all things! I KNEW IT! ... I hate being right...

Good story but somewhat disappointing narration

Jonathan Brooks is a new and talented author. I’ve read most of his books on dungeon / station cores and they are all pretty good.

I’m marking this down due to the poor narration. The intonation, pacing and inflection were all poor. E.g. Pausing mid-sentence with lots of weird inflections on the end of words was distracting throughout.

Not Bad. Not Great.

As the headline implies. This wasn’t a bad book. The story was slow to build up and to build a solid foundation, which in my belief was never quite accomplished. I love crafting, dungeon building, core building, etc. so this book’s genre isn’t outside of the realm of what I enjoy.
This book though. Repeats and repeats and repeats stats that are cumbersome, long and completely unnecessary for the crafting aspect. Mostly this wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t the repetition of the same basic building blocks to crafting that literally read out like a DND stat page that you don’t need to know for the end result. I’d prefer for a one time explanation of the material, then explain the crafting process more. It just felt like padding for the books time/pages.
The overall character development, though slow, was enjoyable, just not nearly in-depth enough.
Months go by and it feels like a grind without much detail. This author is so much better than this book. I look forward to book 2, in hopes that the foundation and errors are fixed. But book 1, was a struggle to complete and to keep interested in.

really enjoyable

I normally don't like dungeon core books but the unique crafting and the character development make this book very enjoyable.

Excellent Story with a fresh approach to the genre

Mr. Brooks is King of the Dungeoncore right now as far as I am concerned. He spits out these dungeon books left and right, up down. This time he brings you the Crafter’s Dungeon. Low and behold, He brings a fresh approach to the genre that a lot of folks are going to like a lot. Coming into the book, I was wondering how he would pull off a crafting and dungeon core story. He certainly does and he does it very well. It makes a lot of sense too. It doesn’t feel like it is something forced in so he can get readers who like crafting books. It is a rather brilliant approach.

One thing I really liked about this book, is that the dungeon building and crafting are the main focus. I have read dungeon cores before that spend too much time outside of a dungeon doing things that don’t interest me. Some folks enjoy that but I don’t. 90% of this story is in the dungeon. That may bore some readers because there is a lot of the book where Sandra just talks to herself (or in her head). She does have the usual assistant that pops up in every dungeon core that gives her direction but she leaves off and on during the story. I like this intense dungeon focus…some may not. There is a lot of litrpg elements here. A lot of stats, a lot of crafting recipes and ingredient gathering, trap designs, enemy designs etc…

Now on to the problem that I had with the audiobook – the narration leaves much to be desired. I am not familiar with Ms Cooksey, but looking at her previous projects this is her first litrpg. She did a serviceable job. She was not bad…she was not great…she was ok. She seemed to improve as the audiobook went on or maybe I just got used to her. She can be very monotone at times. There are orcs in the book and she didn’t quite hit the mark with their voices. I understand that it can’t be easy with a female narrator, but I felt she could have done a bit better with some research. She doesn’t ruin the book by any means. She just holds it back a bit.

I give Crafter’s Dungeon an 8.25. I really enjoyed the story. If the narration had been a bit better that score would have gone up to an 8.75 potentially. This is a story that shouldn’t be missed whether you do the audio or e-book. I really look forward to the 2nd one.

bad narration

I want to like this book, but the narrator SUCKS bad. I may try to read this, but it's so bad that I have not been able to listen to more than a few minutes at a time. If the author reads this, id really consider getting someone else to record this book. Your choice ruins the story.

terrible narrator. decent story.

I just wish the narrator didn't use the same 3 vocal inflections over and over. the main bad guy sounds like a crippled goblin baby.

Nice story of an early world/dungeons development

The humanity of this story line was compelling. An interesting take on a pacifist dungeon which sounds oxymoronic, but it works. Audiobook version gets weighed down by the stats read outs in every development stage. While I enjoyed the book, it feels like the first 3 chapters of an adventure novel that were drawn out to the point of borderline boring. Only upside was the companionship that was found eventually.

could not finish

only got about 2 hours in did not really care for the story as there really wasn't any.

Performance was worse still for some reason the narrator struggles to speak without sounding nasal and condescending.
will be refunding

Loved the story

a great story but it was a little hard to listen to full lists of cores at times

lot more then I expected, well worth the time.

I honestly didn't have high expectations going into this but I was very wrong it sucked me in and was hard to put it down.

another great listen from Jonathan brooks

really enjoyed the story and how the characters grew. very good narration. the pace the story develops is in line with jonathan brooks other books, and is a joy to listen to.

Good, if a little slow

Decent story and decent writing.

I enjoyed the crafting focus but it did sometimes distract from the story.

hoping learn more about the world and the MC in the followin books.

The narrators voice takes a little getting used to maybe.

Great take on the dungeon core premise

I really enjoyed this unique take on the dungeon core book, with the focus being on crafting instead of traps and fighting

One sitting listening

This book has been on my wishlist for a while, I hadn't bought it before because in my experience female narrators can not do a passable male voice.
I had run out of other Dungeon Core books to listen to and so cracked and bought this one. It's actually very good, the story is a pleasant change from murder hobo dungeons or sex crazed dungeons.
My only gripe (and it's a tiny gripe) is that as suspected, the narrator sucks at male voices. As the cast is mostly female, that isn't a huge thing.
If you want a book with Dungeon Cores, crafting, leveling up and a good story. This is it.

Loved it

Loved this book, slow to start (but what dungeon isn’t at the beginning) ! But gets into it and sets up a nice story line and progress that I wanted to carry on following ! Narrator is brilliant and brings The characters to life !

pretty good

a good solid book a different take on dungeon core books my 2nd favourite dungeon core series

Good listen already downloaded next book

looking forward to listening to the next book.
story focuses on the development aspect of a dungeon rather than combat and battles but enough sprinkled in for good measure