Deepwater Dungeon

Dungeon Crawling with a Crab

Review by: The Audiobook ReviewI pre-ordered Deepwater Dungeon, written by Ryan Rimmel and Boe Hagen, on the strength of Rimmel's other series, "Noobtown", and am regretting my haste a little. Maybe that's where I went wrong, assuming the humour and writing would be on par with his other work, but when split between two writers, it doesn't quite hit the mark for me. Overall, it felt slow and a little awkward most of the time, while other parts had me looking up the biology of sea creatures because of descriptions that didn't make total sense.

It starts off a little slow, where we get the backstory of how Sir Crabby came to be elevated from a mundane creature to one with sentience with access to the "system" for levelling, skills, and the like you'd expect for a litRPG adventure.

Plus, there is an overabundance of stat readouts which, on occasion, seem totally unnecessary since very little has changed, yet we're subjected to the entire character sheet. Highlights would be just as well... or placing the full reads at the end of the chapter so we can skip ahead.

Some fun nods and winks to certain other properties, the most obvious for me being Die Hard with a Vengeance. While fun, even this was tedious as the whole phone call scene of "As I was going to St Ives" and water jug bomb problems was played out in detail at one point.

The narration by Phil Thron was good - nothing to write home about but a good overall job. No obvious recording issues that I made a note of; just a good clean read.


Will I continue with the series? I can't say I'd be interested in dropping another credit on this series. It just didn't land for me.