Read: The Bee-ginning: A Dungeon-Core LitRPG by Icalos 📚

You should have been warned by the name: “stuff” is a perfectly accurate representation of what this is. Thus far, we’ve had a review of a router, articles about AI, and thoughts on accessibility. There’s probably a review of a meet thermometer coming up in the near future; obviously, the key to gaining readers is to publish random articles on subject matter so diverse that nobody in the world could care about all of it.

Anyway! This is, oddly, the second LitRPG I’ve read about bees. The first was The Beesong Chronicles by Benjamin Medrano. But where that book focused on a single bee discovering the wider world, this book focuses on a dungeon master creating a bee dungeon. Well, a tower. Or…more of a field with lots of bees in it.

I do enjoy dungeon core books, but that wasn’t the primary reason I picked this up. I was familiar with, and really loved, the other popular series by Icalos, called terminate the other world. Not only did the humour work for me, the narrator was also spectacular. Savy Des-Etages is so enormously talented that I could enjoy listening to her read out a long list of numbers for an hour and a half. In fact, I have!

That actually marks the most noticeable improvement in this new series from terminate the other world. While it’s a dungeon core litrpg, and progression and advancement are still important, the stat sheet has been vastly simplified with many numbers entirely removed. At least in the audio format, this works well. It balances a sense of numbers and progression, with telling a story and not getting bogged down in 90 minutes of reciting charts. Terminate The Other World tried to improve on that as the series went on, but because of the nature of the plot it was stuck with several different stat sheets for a single character.

So how about that story and plot? This is a fish out of water type story: a simple, impoverished peasant boy suddenly finds himself in charge of vast dungeon-like powers and resources, but with no related experience and no idea what to do. Thankfully, there’s always bees! This is a slow build, with lots of character development for our anxious protagonist. As I quite liked him, that was a plus in my book. But if you dislike him for whatever reason, this just won’t be for you. With a few diversions, you’re spending most of the book with him. Also, I really have no idea about the accuracy of the beekeeping involved, but if you’re a professional beekeeper, I could easily see you getting frustrated with it.

As expected from Savy, the narration is absolutely first-class. Although this book doesn’t give her quite as much to do, what it does give her, she executes well. She’s one of the few British people who can do an American accent without sounding annoying or fake.

Although the book is obviously the first in a series, it does end in a satisfying place, giving readers closure and completion, while also leaving things to look forward to in the next book.

If you already know you enjoy litRPG, dungeon core, or Icalos, you should absolutely pick up this book; if you enjoy listening, it’s even better in audio. If you’ve never heard of dungeon core, or litRPG, this actually wouldn’t be a bad place to start.