The Bee-ginning: A Dungeon-Core LitRPG

The Bee Dungeon, Book 1

De: Icalos

Narrado por: Savy Des-Etages

From the author of the Terminate the Other World! series comes a thrilling dungeon-core fantasy adventure sure to generate a lot of buzz . . .

Belissar has always lived a peaceful life, if not a particularly easy one. Though he lost his parents, he was taken in by a kindly villager who taught him his life's calling: beekeeping. But one day the local lord's ruthless son, Ruckanos, comes to their humble village to claim his own tower, slaughtering everyone.

Luckily for Belissar, as he lies dying with an arrow in his back, a tiny worker bee decides to interfere, and he wakes up not only alive but a whole new bee-ing. Turns out his little savior is in actuality a core, and together they've swiped the tower out from under the murderous Ruckanos.

Now Belissar is king of his own beehive/dungeon. But with power comes more trouble than he could've imagined. In addition to building and protecting his own monstrous apiary with the help of his fellow bees, he must confront the encroaching doom known as the Hunger that haunts the world and consumes everything in its path, leaving only death.

A stronger, smarter, more confident, and far less peaceable Belissar is about to show his enemies that when you mess with a hive, you'd better be ready to get stung.

The first volume of the hit LitRPG fantasy series—with more than four million views on Royal Road—now available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook!

©2025 Andrew Ellison (P)2025 Podium Audio

Un-bee-lievable

Ok, let's face it. LitRPG is the bottom of the fantasy barrel and dungeon core is the mold underneath that. The only thing that can make a dungeon core novel at all worth listening to is either an extremely interesting MC or a unique style of dungeon.

Well, this MC is a socially awkward teenage doofus, so the first option is out. However, a bee-oriented dungeon is certainly unique and it was well executed in this book. I loved the way that the bees interpreted the MC's wishes and actions through their own unique lenses. Honestly, they made the book l, and they far outshined the MC.

So, overall, this was a cute and sometimes moving little dungeon core book. It does, however, suffer from many of the usual problems that dungeon core books suffer, such as a severely limited scope, often repetitive action sequences, and a somewhat nonsensical and/or poorly explained reason to exist in the first place. I also find it hard to believe that a dungeon system would exist but have ABSOLUTELY NO INITIAL EXPLANATION OR INSTRUCTIONS WHATSOEVER for the new dungeon master. Such a system is just stupid and would not exist. The only reason it is written like this is because the author wanted to show and not tell, which is good and all, but it still makes the world seem unrealistically stupid.

As for the narrator, I was a little surprised to have a female narrator since the MC is male, but this was a happy surprise. I really enjoyed her narration of the author's other series, Arrival. And really, since pretty much all of the other characters in the book are female bees, it makes sense. At any rate, I love her narration so I was happy to hear it again.

In conclusion, did I like this and would I listen to more? You better bee-lieve it! It had its problems but it is certainly at the top of the bottom of the barrel, so to speak. I recommend giving it a shot.

Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

The MC starts off PAINFULLY ignorant. It was almost bad enough that I nearly put this down. HOWEVER, his ignorance is a plot point that does get addressed and after that I had no complaints what-so-ever.

POBees

I liked the POBees and how they added personality to the bees and showed inner bee politics between the queen bees

Evocation and it's accepted terms

This is a case of it's a great book has a really good story. But there's a problem, and that's the narrator in that her pronunciation of certain words, well, they are correct in certain places around the world, if you're not from that place then it gets a bit confusing, it draws you out of the story. What may sound proper in it? The United States may sound strange in England vice versa.
or canada the fact is, well, it's a great story and it great performance. It's just, you get taken out of the story, trying to figure out what exactly she's saying when it comes to certain words which disrupts your pleasure of the story, and at times you have that internal argument. I like this book. i wanna keep reading it. But then she says something that in your country is not correct and confusing. And it just makes you wanna put it down and not pick it up. But then there's the story that brings you back