The Dungeon Inn Audiobook By Christine L. Donnelly cover art

The Dungeon Inn

A Cozy Dungeon Core LitRPG Fantasy (Tales of Aethervale)

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The Dungeon Inn

By: Christine L. Donnelly
Narrated by: Hannah LaVoie
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Tesni Anderson's biggest problem used to be microwaved fish in the office break room. Then she choked on ramen noodles and woke up as a dungeon core.

The system expects her to create a murder maze filled with traps and monsters. Instead, Tesni has three months to build something unprecedented: a dungeon that doesn't kill people. With the help of her gruff Scottish advisor Threk (who thinks she's completely mad) and a growing family of goblins who just want to belong somewhere, she's determined to create the world's first dungeon inn.

Between essence management that works like a mobile game, aggressive rock-hens that can't judge distances, and the moral compromise of designing "safe" dangerous areas, Tesni discovers that building something nurturing in a world designed for conflict is harder than any office job she's ever had.

But when the first adventurers finally arrive, will her revolutionary hospitality model work—or will she lose everything she's built?

A cozy slice-of-life fantasy about found family, ethical business practices, and proving that sometimes the best way to win is to change the game entirely.

©2026 Christine L Donnelly (P)2026 Christine L Donnelly & Hannah LaVoie Fantasy Humorous
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The concept is decent, and could be quite good. However, the writing is poor. The amount of unnecessary redundant repetition is, well, unnecessary, redundant, and repetitive.

Time devoted to repeating the same phrases that were literally said in the last handful of paragraphs accounts for a full third of the book. Note, that doesn’t include that “core” needs to have everything repeated by Threk, (which is another quarter of the book). Essentially, over half the book (tbh this feels like an under estimate) is painfully superfluous and fails to further the story at all.

Additionally, the vocabulary used is limited in a way that is, by itself, maddeningly repetitious. The words “proper” and “sustainable” (among others) are very overused. Author seems unaware that synonyms are a thing.

Has potential, but too repetitive.

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I had to give this up after just a few chapters. The narration is just that bad. The writing itself is very amateurish with short sentences compounded with the repetitive use of a rather small number of adjectives.

Poorly written with terrible narration

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the dungeon, forget her name, but shes a idiot. is an overly sheltered, spoiled ashely everything she does is in the most whiny way possible, and has ZERO concept the world has teeth. stay away

this book sux

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The main flaw in this book is the fact that the main character cannot communicate without the help of her manager, there was no better form of communication so everything and I mean everything she says is repeated verbatim line for line by the manager, so you’re basically reading this book twice. I can see how this could appeal if you’re looking for something low or no stress, as there is no stress in this book. There’s no real prompt for action or conflict in this book, so if that’s what you’re looking for this is the book for you. Otherwise, this is a very boring and repetitive book. I feel sorry for the voice actor who had to read her lines twice on purpose.

So repetitive and slow

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I went into this looking for a book like Dungeon Life, just even more cozy. Assumed this would be about a dungeon core building a magical inn, and it is... Just in excruciating detail. Book one is almost entirely about the construction of the Inn, with every choice over-analyzed and the results over-described. This is badly in need of a good editor, and if the author has one, might be time to look for another. The beginning is interesting and the end showed signs of a really fun story in here, but the middle was an absolute slog. A few of the issues I had while reading:

1. The single biggest issue was the communication between the core and the goblins. The core must communicate through Threk (just a bad plot choice), but instead of assuming the reader could infer that Threk would obviously relay her orders, the author writes every conversation twice. It honestly felt like half the book was just "Threk explained", "Threk directed", "Threk relayed", "Threk said", etc. Having most of the MCs dialoge duplicated in the same paragraph is just painfully tedious and something a good editor should have flagged immediately.

2. Small issue, but why give the MC a name if she's only going to be referred to as Core through the book? Its not like she doesn't remember who she was, it's referenced all the time.

3. Stop mentioning the expert knowlege of the goblins who were given skills from by the core. For example, every time Cook did anything, the author elaborates how about his expert knowledge (or some synonym) gave him those insight. We get it and we know. Too much repetition.

This is already too long so I'm stopping here, but there are a number of other little things that really boil down to repetition and odd choices that should have been edited out.

Though this book doesnt deserve it in execution, I'm still giving it 5 stars. I really do think the concept is great for a cozy and the last hour showed a ton of potential for future books. I will be getting the next one, but if the author doesnt clean up the style significantly, that'll be my last.

Good potential, love the concept, but a rough start

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