The Pinnacle Warrior – No_Creative_Name

Superior Dungeon-Crawl Novel

This is one of the best dungeon-crawl novels I’ve seen. It is narrowly focused on the dungeon-crawl aspect, with much of the book being of the form “the monster attacks (some detail provided), the characters fight back (more detail provided), 200 experience points!” So readers who particularly enjoy that are going to enjoy the book, and readers who do not will not, no matter its other virtues.

The book does what it does very well. Enough attention is devoted to character interaction to make the characters engaging. The characters and the dungeons change quickly enough that the dungeon encounters do not feel repetitious.

World building is not a focus of this book, and such world building as we get is shallow. The author appears to proof read posted chapters, but not carefully. I’ve read the published books, and they appear to have received better proof reading, though enough mistakes still get through to be distracting.

As the title suggests, the main character is headed for the top. The novel is placed in a milieu in which effort and ability (and luck) can allow a character to acquire extraordinary abilities - but most people who start down that path run out of steam. The author focuses on a character who isn’t going to run out of steam, and makes it engaging.