The Dungeon Shop

Swing and Miss - Solid Premise but Lacked Execution

Review by: The Audiobook ReviewThe Dungeon Shop, by Chris Ford, was a decent swing but ultimately, for me, a miss. The idea had a lot of promise, but the main character, and even most of the side characters, were inconsistent. Frequently from one sentence to the next, with their character spouting dialogue inconsistent with what we know so far.

The main character of Lumina acts as if she's anywhere between four and eighteen years old. I feel like the authors were going for something like a Cinnamon Bun character, but didn't land it. Instead, what you get is more of a discount version; not as saccharin sweet as Cinnamon but trying overly hard to be cute.

Frequently describing people as big bullies (even for the merest hint of something against her) or big dummies, or both, never seemed to fit. The overuse of both got tiresome as well.

On the topic of age, there's a glaring inconsistency in the book. Described by her character sheet a number of times as 17, she then has her birthday yet her next sheet still says she's 17 years old.

The story and idea as a whole weren't all bad, but enough of it was that I doubt I'd continue any further with the series. The dialogue, as mentioned, was often simple and childish, with no real depth to the characters. I liked the idea of setting up shop in a dungeon, which is why I jumped on this in the first place, but that's often more a side-note than the meat of the story.

Narration by Ashlinn Romagnoli was a little one-note. The voice of Lumina had me often thinking of Kaylee (Jewel Staite) from Firefly which I think suited the character. The rest, in particular the male voices, I didn't much care for.

I had a lot of issues with the production of this. Background clicks and the like I'll often let slide, but on multiple times there were issues with the actual file, like a small corruption. Jarring enough to make me stop and jump back to see if it were my earbuds playing up or in the file. Alas, it was in the file. I double-checked it wasn't just on my iPhone by listening to the sections on my PC and they were still there. Example in the sample.


Overall, a disappointing story. The premise was solid, but the story lacked execution.

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I was given this audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review. I have not let this gift affect nor influence my opinions of this audiobook and have left an honest review.