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Bone Dungeon

Elemental Dungeon · Book 1 · 2019

Ryan remembers little about life before he became a dungeon core, apart from a disagreement with the church that ended in his beheading. Now he builds a darkness dungeon stocked with traps and undead creatures. A rising necromancer and the watchful Adventurer’s Guild give him reasons to prove he can use those powers without becoming a menace.

FantasyLitRPG Dungeon core Wordplay

From the publisher’s blurb

“his own guilty pleasure, skeletal fight club”

Read the full description at Portal Books publisher description

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What makes it funny?

Ryan’s dungeon has ill-named skeletons, bone puns and a skeletal fight club he’d rather keep from his fairy assistant. Erin’s nagging meets his more relaxed approach to the job. Readers enjoy the puns and the paired protagonists; some recommend the book to dungeon-core newcomers.

The comedy at work

A monster-filled dungeon becomes a place with hobbies and arguments about how to run it. The undead setting gives Ryan plenty of material for wordplay, while frequent pop-culture references connect his world to the reader’s.

Try this if…

There’s an appeal here for anyone more interested in building the dungeon than clearing it. Book-group readers have named it a favorite alongside Divine Dungeon, and the Frank Ormond review particularly enjoys Ryan and Erin’s side of the story.

Good to know

The Elemental Dungeon trilogy is complete, continuing with Infernal Bones and Hallowed Bones. Readers differ on joke density: readers in book groups enjoy the puns, while Frank Ormond finds the pop-culture references excessive. The story includes execution and dark imagery.