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.

[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.

when reading this story it feels like there are chapters missing. Reading “A Collection of Tales” fills in some of the gaps but not all of them. Even so everything else is so great I have to give it 5 stars.

I am really enjoying this story.

My biggest complaint is that, when I made the mistake of reading it at night, I "one more chapter"ed it until 2am on a work night.

I suspect that the author edited the story before I found it since the grammer errors that people mention are not present to any great degree.  It is clear to me that the author does not speak US English (he uses "different to" instead of "different from") and gives distances in kilometers.  This seems odd for a US main character but isn't a deal breaker for me.

Style wise, most chapters begin with a main character's point of view and then have interludes from other character's views.  This is very well done since each section is headed with the character / location that section focuses on.

I like most of the characters in the story and I don't find them to be shallow.  We only get to see a bit of each of them and don't need to know if they make their decisions because of the trauma of wetting their bed when they were ten years old.

The main character is self described as a borderline psychopath.  That should be borderline sociopath but a simple search and replace will fix that without affecting the story.

The Misplaed Dungeon is an enjoyable read, if you can accept its flaws.

The format of the novel is a little strange at first; every chapter is begins with the main character's point of view, followed by up to three interludes, which can be almost as long as the main chapter in a few cases.  In a few chapters the interludes were very distracting, and at a few points it almost seemed like the author was planning to make a different character into the main protagonist.  Despite being nominally a LITRPG/Dungeon Core novel, any discussion of game mechanics (levelling, classes, experience, etc.) is minimal (Whether you see this as a positive or negative is a matter of personal preference).

The main character is a Mary Sue, and grows incredibly powerful quickly enough to seriously push the boundaries of suspension of disbelief.

That being said, she still does interesting things which can engage the reader, and sometimes it can be fun to read a book with a character who is ridiculously powerful.

The main plot of the book is traditional fantasy fare, a war between the gods.  It's isn't a point for or against this book.

There are quite a few grammatical mistakes in the early chapters, but far less in the second half of the book.  The author has clearly improved, and at no point do grammatical mistakes make it impossble to understand a sentence or paragraph.

The Misplaced Dungeon has some problems, which at times get truly annoying.  However, if you like dungeon core or LITRPG, I suggest you at least try this novel, because it can be an entertaining read.

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.

HOLY SHIT THIS STORY IS AWESOME, DONT MESS WITH MOTHER!

I normally don't write reviews, but I couldn't sit back while such a good book is so underrated. Overall unlike other dungeon story's  on this site that focus more on creating a unique and difficult dungeon, and how it interacts with the world around it, this story treats the dungeon not as more of an organization, but as an individual. I believe this is the best and worst point of the story. Best because this gives it a unique atmosphere around the story world, and makes it stand out from its contemporaries. Worse because many who come to read this are expecting something entirely different from what was delivered. Just make sure that you go into this with an open mind. (To Author: Don't get discouraged by the low reviews!)

this is a lot of fun it's multiple perspectives and a more wide-reaching story that focuses on more than just the individual dungeon turn some people off but it really shouldn't as well it may take longer does add more depth to the universe in which  MC lives and what's going on around her. She is a bit of an overpowered character but wouldn't quite call her Mary Sue because she does have some character depth and is not infallible. The only problem was the story is that the villains aren't the most fleshed out that they could be but like this is Royal Roads pretty rare that actually find a well fleshed out villain so wouldn't really call that a downside. All in all, I would definitely recommend this story is something fun to read especially if you're looking for a plucky protagonist beating the daylights out of villains really do give the impression that they need to get beat up.

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.