The Dungeoneers

Excellent writer, interesting story. The cast was huge and I devolved into trading the dwarf names for "some dwarf" with the lesser characters. Cool concept I'd never heard before with the antagonist. Waffles!

Nicely done light fantasy, with some very good tongue-in-cheek humor regarding the "everyday" existence of dwarves in a fantasy world in which dungeon-delving is the norm. There were a few minor misspellings and an occasional awkward sentence, but they were not so noticeable as to overwhelm the book or keep me from enjoying it. This was a fun read that kept my attention and had some wonderfully humorous moments. I will be watching for the next book.

The Dungeoneers is a fantasy comedy, and well envisioned. The team is clearly experienced, creative, and effective at clearing and stripping dungeons. The villain has a clever plan for winning, and the skills to carry it out.
But I can't recommend this for casual reading.
The characters are flat and largely interchangeable; the viewpoint character is as well developed as minor side characters-at the end of the book I knew no more about him than I did at the end of chapter four. The team is big, at twenty working members and two human observers, but we don't even get a team roster, let alone actual development.
The pacing is poor. Chapter one is On The Road but chapter two jumps back to the start of the trip for no discernable reason. The trip was a great chance to develop characters and relationships, underutilized. The dungeon should have been tense, but tension requires the audience to care. The climax is chaotic and feels like it comes from nowhere. And just how did the bad guy do the set-up he claimed?

2.6 out of 5
Recommended for RPG players that need dungeon clearing ideas.

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: The Dungeoneers by Jeffery Russell is a story that I was instantly attracted to on its blurb and the overall image it was projecting. Here was a comedic fantasy book that wanted to take aim at the genre and perhaps shake a finger or two at most of its overused tropes while keeping the reader thoroughly entertained. This was one of the first books I read simply based on the blurb details.

The main plot begins with our protagonist hero Durham, a guard who has almost no future and is currently content with his role in the city. On being given a chance to accompany a group of dwarves on a fortuitous expedition, he jumps at it. The Dwarves however view him with a much different viewpoint. The main plot then hilariously unspools as the band slowly tries to integrate Durham into their ways, while viewing him with distaste and as a bad portent. Durham however fails to see things from that perspective and does his best to be considered part of the Dungeoneers.

The main plot which follows is a mixture of intentional comedy, genre spoofs and just plain hijinks. The story is a wild mix of Pratchett-esque comedy and some plain-old D&D fantasy, while for most readers this will be a fun combination. I didn’t quite enjoy the story as it was meant to be. One of my key distractions was the writing and characterization, which seems a tad amateurish. None of the characters including the protagonist stand out and that can be a drag with any book. What I mean by that is that them seem too caricaturish without having any real persona to them. This made almost interchangeable in my mind and it was hard to connect with them. Also with the plot which is a simple quest littered with insanity, I couldn’t bring myself to laugh along every time as some of the events just seemed repetitive.

Overall I very much wanted to like and enjoy this title but perhaps this book needs a further rewrite and some strong editing. I’m sure there will be readers who must have enjoyed this book tremendously and that is good. However for me, this book just didn’t click and was one of the few that I finished but didn’t care for much of its plot happenings and characters.

25% fantasy parody
25% dwarven cultural (and anatomical!?!) thesis
50% lighthearted dungeon romp

It's mostly lighthearted fantasy, but through the course of the book an unanticipated depth develops. I don't want to restate everything in the other reviews, so I'll just if you have any interest in the lighthearted fantasy, give this a shot. Bonus, it's really well written for an indie book. You won't find yourself grimacing at repeated grammatical errors. They exist, but they are few and far between.

I was looking for a fun, lighthearted playful adventure along the lines of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Douglas Adams, and Christopher Moore (among others)... and stumbled upon this series. I read the first book and now am ready to go on another adventure with the Dungeoneers! I had a hard time getting into this book. Very slow start. In fact I read 2 other books between the first couple of chapters. I decided to give it one more shot and suddenly it went from slogging along to engaging me in the story. The Lead character was blah for about half the book and then his character comes alive. Good job on creating interesting Dwarves as main characters. The humor was dry at times and slapstick at others. While the writing was uneven, the unusual story eventually made up for it. Now I want to see what their next adventure will be like!

SPOILERS

I liked the Dwarves, it was fun to see female Dwarves for what legitimately seemed like the first time In my reading career.

However... sex changing, self fertilizing Dwarves was... weak. Really weak. And it kept popping into my head each time one of the females played any role. It takes you completely out of the story and derailed any of the momentum that was building during the action scenesn of which the lady-dwarves played a big role.

Completely and utterly distracting and maybe good for a quick chuckle, but far outweighed by how utterly poorly thought out it was.

That being said... it was a fun read. Good dialoguen interesting characters and the only thing really missing was some background on a few plot points. However, using further books to flesh out the background on this first adventure might weave future installments together quite well

This book was a charming surprise.
I downloaded it because of the title and subtitle. It made me smile. I am glad I took a chance on an unknown, to me, author because this was a seriously fun read.
If you ever played any adventure games, Zelda and the like then you'll find yourself in a very familiar feeling world. But more fleshed out and thought out than any regular puzzle level..this makes sense if you read the book.
The Dwarves were surprising because they are CLEVER, smart, intelligent beings who are most excellent at their Dungeoneer jobs.
The use of chickens in this book is awesome and made me giggle more than once.

The story moves along, there's a nice bit of action but nothing that's..unsettling or anything. It just flows nicely and while action-y no more violent than a cool boss scene in a video game.

Anyways hard to say more without giving the book away except try it, read it, it's charming.

You will seldom find such a number of odd characters working together...professionally...to invade and sack dungeons. Twenty of them and mostly dwarves. Melding them together as a group is in itself quite an accomplishment, considering the various idiosyncratic personalities on display.
Add to this melting pot one lone goat guard of uncertain future prospects and a necromancer with way too many. Now you are set for a zany fantasy adventure in the best tradition of a Terry Pratchett space adventure.
Fascinating! And with weird cuisine for sustenance, a rollicking good ride to fun! Enjoy.

Currently I give any book worth reading once four stars. If I would read it again it deserves five. Using that system, this book deserves six stars! I have never read a book with humor so satisfying that I need to lay the book down and just savor the humor for a while. The unique take on dwarves that answers many questions is reason enough to pick up this book. The discussion about Dwarven sexuality had me simultaneously reaching for a dictionary, and rolling on the floor laughing. I close with two little words. Wee cow.

I really enjoyed this book, and chuckled and laughed out loud throughout. It is vey reminiscent of the adventures in Pratchett's Discworld series (genre?), but I thought that was a good thing. Well written and engaging, despite a few editorial issues. I think it's closer to 4.5 or 5 stars, but It's not quite a full five stars. I woild happily buy more in this series.

Suspend disbelief and enter the world of the Dungeoneers!

Disclaimer: I obtained this book for free, but my review is my honest opinion.

Good story. Basically it is a well told game script. Sort of an NPC type thing. The story is interesting and the writing good, but to me there was no fire, no suspense because the characters (players) were essentially in protected mode.

There a two books in the series; each stand alone. The 2nd is better, "Black Fog Island." This is still a good book for the money. Recommended, okay, not a quick read and not a lot to it.