I loved this very much! The characters, the actions and even the plot itself! Very inspiring for my own book too!

this was a interesting read, the characters were great and I enjoyed the horror elements of the book. I enjoyed reading this and look forward to more from the author.

David is a lowly tech driving to a repair in the middle of the Australian outback when he crashes into a literal monster. He finds himself suddenly split, a consciousness separated from his body, with no idea what is going on until a fairy pops up to tell him he is now a dungeon core.. We follow Dungeon Core David as he slowly builds out a dungeon and grows his monsters, but Human David also somehow has a dungeon core of his own, prompting him to excel as skills, complete quests, and defeat bad guys back in the real world.

I've been wanting to try out more in the dungeon core subgenre of LitRPG, this definitely had some interesting ideas behind it. Smartly the book has the protagonist familiar with LitRPG, so when he finds out what he's become at the start, we get to skip over all the explanation and tutorial... but then he goes on to spend several chapters just screwing around and not really figuring much out. The tone is very over the top crass, so accepting that as intentional, I ignored a lot of stuff I would not typically just gloss over in a book. This is also has significant sections written in a style that you see a lot with horror (I'd be a bit surprised if the author doesn't have experience in the horror genre), meant to evoke repulsion and disgust in the reader for effect as well as making everything in the world seem grimy - lots of vomit and defecating, people are all junkies and pedos, that sort of thing. I just don't get along with that at all unfortunately. LitRPG often has self insert power fantasy elements, but here also like often seen in horror, it plays out in a way more leaning toward power dynamics and dominance. The protagonist is also pretty solidly in Nice Guy territory, in ways beyond this he's regularly depicted as kind of a repellent person, so I think it helps to be aware going in to know he's going to be an unpleasant perspective to be in, I do think that plays right in with the previous points and the intentions of over all feel.

I liked the parts that involved actually building the dungeon and problem solving, even the idea of a TCG with other dungeons is really cool. For me, most of the elements otherwise were just things I am zero percent into, so just overwhelmingly not my thing, but I think there is a ton of crossover appeal here that I would recommend to horror genre readers or LitRPG fans who might have an interest in modern horror.

Dungeon Configure by Troy Neenan, a pretty good entry into the LitRPG series. A Dungeon in the fantasy term of the word is a living entity, so who do you get when you combine a human with a newly formed Dungeon?