This Used to Be About Dungeons: Volume 1 cover art

This Used to Be About Dungeons: Volume 1

This Used to Be About Dungeons, Book 1

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This Used to Be About Dungeons: Volume 1

By: Alexander Wales
Narrated by: Zura Johnson
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About this listen

This is a tale that used to be about dungeons...

Now it's mostly about walking in the woods with a friend, looking for mushrooms to put in your soup. Maybe haggling with the squash seller, or taking care of a neglected garden, or even just putting some jam on a good shortbread biscuit. And yes, sometimes you still go down into the dungeons with your friends, and kill monsters there, disarm traps, avoid spiked pits etcetera, etcetera. But when you come out now, it's not really about the gold and loot. It's about realizing you've got a good cure for that old shepherd's cough, or maybe you even found the perfect magic trinket to give to the local kids who helped you out when your cat was sick.

Just remember that dungeons are always going to be there. Yes, sometimes you might need to make a journey to one of the Spirit Gates or a pilgrimage with the local Cleric of Symmetry to a holy shrine. But your tour through the local lairs can wait. There's a big world out there, a mostly tame place with lots of magic and even more to do and see...

Join me, won't you?

©2023 Alexander Wales (P)2023 Podium Audio Action & Adventure Fantasy Fiction Humorous Comedy

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I knew going in that this was a highly recommended slice of life book. I expected something like Legends and Lattes about a woman opening a bookstore. Instead we get a 20 hour story about a dungeoneering party who decide to make their living dungeoneering who do 2 short dungeons in the entire course of the book. I don't actually think doing the dungeons even made up 5% of the book. The first dungeon feels like it can't have taken 30 minutes of audiobook time.

Soooo much of this is just exposition and worldbuilding. One of the characters is a priest so you get paragraph after paragraph about the religion of the world. One is a did so you get all the cultural clashes of someone in tune with nature vs random people. And they just talk about all this. Constantly.

Now I'm not averse to slide of life stories but there has to be some underlying plot. This just lacks that. Like they all say "I want to do another dungeon." "Oh, I want to do 2 back to back." "Oh yes." theeeen one does some gardening, one goes to town for a chat with the meat seller for dinner, one goes to inspect the local wildlife and then they sit down for a couple of hours to try and fail to work out a team name. Nothing happens.

If this book was 8 hours long that'd be fine but it's 23 hours. I could read 3 good books with a beginning, middle and end in that time rather than "2 weeks in the lives of lazy 20-somethings".

The narration was fine but the accents seemed to fluctuate in intensity depending on how much she remembered to do them.

Too little plot. Very slow.

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U need to elaborate with things that we are supposedly meant to know. I didn’t figure out what an “Ectad” was until ch. 30 something!!! If was also kind of boring and had an odd cliffhanger. Not sure if I’ll get the next book.

Explain pls.

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This is about dungeons but it also includes recruiting the strangers for the first dungeon run, dealing with the spoils and the planning necessary to undertake more. It delves into the motives of each multilayered character giving each a background and personality which explains their eagerness or reluctance to undertake dungeoneering and also impacts their relationships with other party members. In doing so it creates a believable vibrant world where each has lives and interests outside of the party and each character is memorable beyond their class and function in the dungeon. The worldbuilding even goes so far as to consider the support functions necessary to assist the adventurers from selling their loot to the functions of the guild and looks back on aspects of their initial training. I look forward to a sequel as it was enjoyable, funny and heartfelt in places with a narration that works very well for each character.

Not just about dungeons and all the better for it!

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I really enjoyed this. I found it balanced well the slice of life details and adventuring. There was a narrative and the story moved forward (unlike other popular fantasy slice of life behemoths).
World building was superb, so much detail conveyed in simple throw away chatter and what we know of this world is intriguing and i’m looking forward to finding out more.
Excellent commentary.

Superb slice of life fantasy

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