The Misplaced Dungeon

Style: Everything is far too rushed. Descriptions get glossed over, conversations are summed up, and so many small time skips in the first four chapters just killed it. Don't do a five minute time skip to avoid a conversation, you are missing golden opportunities to build your world and characters.

Story: You have a wonderful concept, I was really looking forward to it.

Grammar: Not abysmal, but there are enough errors to be annoying. 

Character: They all have potential, but they fall flat because options to build them are glossed over. We know no motivations and no desires.

An entertaining and engaging read of an ocean based dungeon. I find the development of new creatures interesting and wish there was more detail in it. The indirect interactions between Mary and the various natives, priests and other assorted folks is interesting.

There are a few grammar problems and incorrect word choices, but nothing that majorly detracts from the story.

However, the main problems comes in with story flow, sparse worldbuilding and somewhat stilted dialogue. 

Often it feels to that the author skims over things I would like to know more about, like the octopi mages and gives me exhaustive detail on dungeons moving around in desert mountains and goat herders investing their finder's fees that I don't really care that much about.

The Dungeon Mary communicates in single sentences and as the story continues we rarely get the opportunity to experience her viewpoint, which is slightly frustrating as we don't really get a feel for what the main character is actually doing and planning.

I do find myself confused about how Mary, her soul ripped from earth, told by a blue haired woman she was a dungeon now and left in freefall over  a strange planet somehow immediately knew what mana was, and how to use it to make such things as telescopes and gliders. It was presented to us a fait accompli, with no explanation of where this sudden manna mastery of Mary's came from.

I'm also not sure how Mary magically smelt out that the guard captain was an earthling like her, beyond simple forced plot contrivance.

I am intrigued about the earth sub-plot with the system apparently making itself at home, and am looking forward to where the author goes with that.

First off, many comments seem to take issue with character dev (i will get back to this), but from what I see it has been done with intent that gives a flow to the story and avoids getting stuck in drawn out dialouge chains.

If you are looking for something that will quickly tell you all there is to "know" the world then you may not find this to your tastes.  Many times part will be shown about the world while the other part is hidden, and this fits well with how no single individual will really know how all parts of their world really interact.

Style: On the note of above, the general style is trended much more to letting characters actions slowly let you understand both their nature and the world bit by bit.  This is great at avoiding an info dump and has allowed the author to add to the world smoothly as the story progress.  Many stories rush to define the entire world and ends up messing their story up  with contradictions.  Here we get to see the interactions and how many parties are out for their own goals.

Story: Well developed original idea and good use of reality aspects in various events.  Why build a target when they probably wont find MC core is a good example.  Also unlike other "dungeon" stories, unique use of the ability to "run" if they can manage it.  Full rules for the "Gods" hasn't been shown, but author allows the reader to imagine and presume details which enhances immersion without dropping long drawn out segments that make you jus want to skip forward.

Grammer: For a first story, only some minor issues along the way that occasionally annoying don't really bring down the ability to read or understand the story and author intent.  Some proof check and/or an outside editor would pretty well resolve this.  Also, if you look at many well written storys and even translations this sort of issue happens many times as the writer estabishes.

Character: As mentioned at the start, I find the author's method of slowly devloping the characters and letting their actions to really define them over just relying on dialouge.  The main risk being the quantity of semi-main and side characters can be a risk of loosing inclusion of them but so far author has been good at keeping them in there persona's and showing in several cases how they are influenced by their gods and/or preconceptions with how the world runs and a dungeons role in it.

I just found this book and then completed it in a single sitting!

It is fun and enjoyable. Looking forward to more chapters coming out :)

Interesting take on the dungeon core story. In fact, it's kinda inverted from the ordinary tale.
In this story the dungeon itself (the rooms and caverns) plays a secondary role, it's mostly about the interaction of the dungeon core (the personality called Mary) with the rest of the world.

We're not treated to descriptions of rooms down to the milimeter and endless number-expressed attributes of various denziens of said rooms, nor adventurers crunching through them and the description of every blow exchanged between these two sides.
Instead it's more a tale of high politics, of kingdom building. Not the nitty gritty of leveling, discovery and close encounters with death we're used to from other dungeon cores, but a fast paced developement of a new power in the world and how she spreads her influence across the globe.

In addition, we have side characters that are more or less unconnected (some very much more so, see *spoiler*) to Mary-the-dungeon-core, that fill in the story around her at times rather limited point of view.

Be warned, the first few chapters are a bit bumpy, especially since we readers are thrown pretty much in the deep end without a lot of explanations, but once the author finds his stride, this is a 5 star novel. I took away half a star for the begining nonetheless, wouldn't do to give anyone a big head ;)

[As of “Chapter 39”]

So, if we’re talking pure enjoyment factor, I rate it a 5, although i do realise there are problems which hold this novel back a bit.

General:

While this technically has a LitRPG style system in it, we aren’t really ever shown it. Its mentioned in passing rather than having blue boxes every third line. How should i word it . . . Its used to justify some of the happenings in the story, rather than actually being a major focus.

We also have an ocean dungeon, rather than some of the more widely done goblin/kobold caves. Its certainly nicer to read about, and I believe it allows for a range of more interesting creatures.

Also, the connection between the two worlds is rather well done and adds for some interesting depth (ocean pun?) to the story.

Style:

Well, i’m still not entirely sure what style is, but i’ll give this a go. The author crams multiple perspectives into every chapter, which allows us to easily see what is happening in multiple places at the same time. Although I feel we have to many perspectives, as a lot of the characters we hear from are somewhat insignificant. I do quite enjoy this method of story-telling, but i think it would be better with less perspectives or just with a larger focus on Mary.

Story:

I was originally thinking that there wasn’t a whole lot of story to this, and that it could essentially be summed up by the description of the novel. I think it might be developing a bit of a more serious story lately, and i’m rather enjoying where this is heading. So, its a little slow to kick off, it seemed to be more focused on building the world to start off with, which is perfectly fine.

Grammer:

I don’t really remember any glaring problems with the grammer. The whole story is legible. I do remember getting confused by the wording occasionally, but i feel that was more my fault than the authors. So, pretty good grammer

Characters:

The character development is rather . . . absent in this novel. Not to mention we are not given much information about the characters in the first place. Its taken a while, but I think there has been some progress on this front. It seems odd, but we get more thoughts from the side characters, leading them to have a much more defined personality than the main characters. The more central characters seem to be to busy doing things to tell us how they are thinking. So while we are given a good idea of how they act, their thoughts are a bit of a mystery.

I would say this is because we simply have to many characters, I can’t keep track of most of them. Often when a name comes up in a chapter I end up asking myself if its a new character or not, as i am unable to remember all these names. The lack of development comes from the fact that we are to busy jumping around through different perspectives to actually learn about the characters. 

Not to mention, that a lot of the characters are rather redundant so far. Mostly the other dungeons and the people involved with them. I don’t mind hearing about them, but there seems to be too much focus on these characters. Although, we haven’t from them so much lately, which is good. Means there is more space for the more important stuff.

TL;DR

So:

- Grammer = Good

- Style = meh, i liked it

- Story = alright, but its getting better

- Characters = passable, needs more work

= Its a good novel and everyone should read it.

*Updated Review chapter 41*

 OKay where this story really fell on its face for me is in chapter 39.

As the novel is written I believe that author doesn’t made any real structure on how their fantasy world works. They it make up along the way as they write. It’s painfully noticeable.

Review as of chapter 32 (Three stars at the time)

The 1st 15 chapters I got to enjoy Mary as she struggled as a new dungeon at vicious odds with her maker. She is snarky, abrasive and easily distracted. Fun aside, the issues with this work rear thier heads the further on I read. The biggest one is that Mary is not presented with difficult challenges. There are no  clever opponents, the adventurers are weak and none of her plans backfire.

So... While fun there isn't a challenging dymanic to enrich this story.

The style is acceptable.

The grammar in this story is great although the spelling and possessive plural confusion are an occasional problem. Easily fixed with an extra round of editing by the author.

The characters are clear but very shallow.

The story concept has potential. However, the world and rules that the story take place in are very poorly conceived and undermine the potential challenges and stakes faced by the main character right out the gate.

so much fun to read and laugh at. i cant wait for more to read and see what happens next to this world that a foul mouthed 16 year old girl can modify dna of ocean animals. cant wait for mantis shrimp to come about and there shockwave killing hits taking out adventures.

Story is pretty straight forward, FINALLY happy to see someone else doing a dungeon themed story that isn't cookie cutter. Seriously, I can't remember the last time I heard of an ocean dungeon even though the ocean is a teffifying place filled with things that like to bite in half, poison, impale, and electrocute you to death. Why isn't anyone else doing this? For fuck sake, enough with the kobolds, enough with the skeletons and slimes, GET A UNIQUE RACE!

Some spelling problems, but I think that is mostly characters talking in accents or could just be bad spelling. I dunno, ask Author-san.

Characters are fairly meh for now, but to be fair, as of writing this, it's only 22 chapters long and has multiple POVs, so in-depth character development is in it's early stages.

The real thing of note here is how the author reminds the readers there is more to the the life of a person in a fantasy world than getting stronger, or getting revenge, or something else which the MC will tunnel vision in on. So many times have I seen authors write about 1 thing, and 1 thing alone(That one thing is usually whatever is vital to the plot.) to the point where, they exhaust themselves so much they start putting in filler chapters until they can think of a new direction to take the story in.

Life in a fantasy world has so many new things to explore besides making money, getting stronger, and learning magic. And I'm glad this more casual approach to the dungeon genre has shown that.