Bio Dungeon: Symbiote

The Body's Dungeon, Book 1

By: Jeffrey "Falcon" Logue, Jonathan Brooks

Narrated by: Miles Meili

Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins

Publisher's summary

In the icy north exists a young orphan and a war on a microscopic scale...

Marstin Hardgrove was orphaned at a young age, forced to live on the streets, and needed to turn to thievery to survive. When a special job assigned to him by the Thieves’ Guild went awry, the guild leadership punished him with a beating, compelled him to eat dirt and rocks to soothe his hunger, and left him to die in an abandoned mine. Unbeknownst to the young thief, when he was forced to eat that handful of dirt and rocks…he also ended up swallowing a tiny dungeon crystal.

Thrown into a highly unusual world filled with cells, bacteria, and other dangerous pathogens, the tiny dungeon crystal is, at first, confused by his surroundings. After seeing how the different complex systems of the body work together, the crystal is quickly fascinated; it isn’t long before he decides that, instead of trying to escape, he wants the body for himself. He wants to possess the living being for his own use as a crystal, wholly unlike anything the world has ever seen before.

To get to that point, however, the fledgling dungeon crystal has to learn how to survive against the different enemies trying to destroy him. Not only will he have to defeat the hostile pathogens standing in the way of his complete domination; but also, as a foreign invader to the body, himself, Marstin’s natural immune system sees the crystal as a threat. The only way to survive is to create his own immune cell defenders and place traps to prevent anything from reaching his dungeon crystal. In short: He has to turn the body into a dungeon.

But will his new Bio Dungeon be enough to keep him - and the body he wants to possess - alive?

Contains LitRPG/GameLit elements, such as character progression, statistics, and resource management. Also contains an in-depth, science-based portrayal of how the immune system responds to foreign pathogens via different white blood cells and other microscopic protectors. No harems, sexual content, or foul language.

©2020 Jonathan Brooks (P)2020 Jonathan Brooks

Holy Pandemic Batman! What A Timely Story.

Let me put this upfront, this is a fantastic book and especially timely/worth the credit. Buy it. Now on to the review.

Bio Dungeon: Symbiote while descriptive is a title that could leave uninitiated wondering what is going on here. Heck even if you love dungeon core stories and know the genre you might think like I did initially "Ok this is little much". Wow was I wrong.

Imagine the Magic School Bus shrinking and moving through the body, the episode of Futurama where Fry gets parasites that make him smarter, or Pirate of the Pancreas from Rick and Morty. The dungeon in this story is similar to that. The execution is often on the cellular level but most of the fighting the dungeon does is alongside and in place of the immune system. In one word, brilliant. Sorry to get caught up on this but what a freaking cool idea. Our bodies are being constantly invaded by foreign bacteria and viruses and fighting them off just like a dungeon. Conceptually it is ingenious.

On to the execution, it is technically saavy and fast-paced. One of the best parts of the book was that the authors didn't go halfway on their incorporation/descriptions of the human body (speaking as a biologist). Don't get me wrong the book isn't overly technical, they make a specific effort to use nicknames over terminology, but the level of detail is impressive. A typical dungeon core story there are two parallel perspectives. Bio Dungeon however is an inversion of the trope 'adventurer exploring the dungeon'. It is more the dungeon trying to keep the adventurer alive.

Bio Dungeon suffers from the occasional pronunciation issue, is abrupt in parts of the plot, and has some character identity discordance but overall it is an interesting piece of writing. It doesn't directly relate to the pandemic so even if you are burned out I think this would be an worthwhile listen.

Very cool!

i learn something's about human body

very interesting style dungeon core book . no fairy in this one just a stem sell that works like a fairy . an well the core has to help the body fight of bad things in the body by creating his own cells to fight them off so no monsters just the bad stuff like bacteria parasites' ect . an it seems like the info is very accurate cause while listing to it had to ask my sirri what some of the cells were an ect in the body an lean some stuff from it. if you are looking for a core book with adventures ect diving in a dungeon this may not be for you but it does have a story about the host the core is in that is interesting also

A dungeon inside a body

We all have our favorite dungeon core stories where adventures plumb the depths for loot and experience but this one is tiny and inside a body. That alone should intrigue you. It did for me and I was glad I took the plunge

Felt smarter after reading this.

I love how at the end of the book the author gave an explanation for how everything worked and I'm thankful for it. This book was great I loved how the dungeon core became part of the human body.

Can’t wait for the sequel!

This was a wonderously unique take on the genre, I simply cannot wait for the sequel!
Impressive integration of human biological knowledge into the writing of this book made it an amazing read, I recommend it to everyone. It’s very well thought out and written.

overall a great story

A refreshingly different take to a dungeon core book! I enjoyed this and highly recommend it.

Inventive Dungeon Core Book

This is now one of my favorite dungeon core books. Treating the human body as a dungeon is such an innovative approach. The authors did a great amount of research into human anatomy and physiology. I learned so much from the book!

Fun new dungeon take

~Disclaimer: I received a free audiobook copy of this book.~

Jonathan Brooks is clearly a favorite of mine. Jeffrey "Falcon" Logue isn’t someone I’m familiar with, but I may need to check him out.

This is a fun take on a dungeon. I found the dungeon elements interesting and enjoyable. However, the host's pov was initially less interesting to me. Heists are really not my thing, but once the story got past that I grew to like him.

This book has a much slower start than a majority of the litrpg I pick up to read.

This book is heavy with medical and biological terms. I can’t really speak to the accuracy because I took one biology course in high school and then moved on to chemistry. So, my knowledge is pretty superficial. However, I see a lot of complaints about people NOT enjoying the medical side of things and thought I should point out that is the premise of the story and that aspect is focused on heavily. Use your best judgment on whether or not you will enjoy that.

Miles Meili continues to be a solid narrator. He creates good characterization with his voices.

Thumbs up(Amazon, you don't know what optional is)

I found the idea of a dungeon entering the body rather fascinating. As far as the book goes, I think it executed it rather well. There are some points that it focused a bit more on the Core than the human host, as in, I felt that the POV normally would have changed by now. Otherwise I have no real complaints, other than an occasionally touch up. Good book, interesting idea. Fascinating take on biology.

Amazing story with real world applications

A Jew show this powerhouse of authors have risen to new levels of greatness and made a possible text bookFor future doctors and nurses this is a book the has real world applications and will help your children to understand the functions of the body and The lungs and immune n system can't wait to see what we do when we get into the brain in the next book