The Station Core (Station Cores, #1) by Jonathan Brooks

The Station Core (Station Cores, #1) Reviews

• 
  Kyte

  I have real trouble to rate this book, because its split in 2 parts.
  
  And the first part, the first 50 percent, is just "Defunct Warmachine decimates local fauna".
  Its an absolute bore and i had real trouble to keep going. His enemies range von bunnies to bears.
  Neat SciFi stuff you will miss equally to intelligent advasarys. Just a hole in the ground with rudimentary traps and a army of woodland critters for defence.
  
  After the 50% mark, the story makes a radical shift and becomes worth reading. I finished the second half in the book within a day while the first half took me a week.
  And the second Part is quite good, throwing intelligent species into the mix, speeding up the story, advancing the technology and showing the long-term effects of the cores presence.
  
  However, even if i just rate the second part, it fails to make my expectation.
  When i read "Station Core" a SciFi take on the Dungeon Core subgrenre, i expected more like... Interplanetary defences, custom warships, planets fused together, maybe spanning around a sun as the fortress, luring aliens with riches and technology into its deadly trap.
  Not... A hole in the ground on a planet where a Bear nearly kills it.
  
  Whch is why i remove 2 stars for the first half of the book for being incredible boring and longwinded and another star for failing to deliver to the scifi genre.
• 
  Billie

  Pros - Very imaginative and descriptive. Brooks takes you into the world and keeps you there. Cons - could use an editor - used the word "that" unnecessarily. The female AI swung from sweet to raunchy and he character never really develops.
• 
  Travis

  Besides the need for another round of proofreading, I liked this story.
  I agree with other reviews in that there were a lot of things that don't make sense if you try to put this story into the framework that it was supposedly based on, but if you ignore all of that, then it's a very nice story, and it's well worth reading. I'm not sure why the author chose the setting he did, then promptly threw it all out the window to make the rest of the story, perhaps some reworking of the backstory before laying out the whole thing might be in order, but otherwise, I liked the story, and although I can't say I agreed with everything in the book, and there were some errors, (like when the core dropped to 1%, then later it was forgotten, and the core was listed as 2%), I can't say there's really anything there that would absolutely break the story either, so if you like a good LitRPG story, feel free to give this one a try, you might enjoy it.
• 
  Kris

  It gets better
  
  I have to say, the first half of this book is a slog. I understand the need for a back story, but man is it long. If you want to hear all about the exploits of animals and the almost entirely useless, and pointlessly foul mouthed sidekick, the first half of this is for you.
  
  In essence, the first 50% is 100 years of meh, and the next 40% is 3-4 weeks of things going on. The last 10% is charts.
  
  That 40% is well written, has an interesting storyline and characters, as well as a cliffhanger. I would recommend reading the reason the core is there, then assuming things happen and jumping to part 2. Even the sidekick sleeps through most of part one.
  
  All in all, it does get good. It is well written and 2 of the characters (of which there are basically 3) are relatable. The odd one out being the sidekick. She sounds like someone who needs to learn how to swear and not act like a 10 yr old who knows 1 swear word.
• 
  Angel Ludwig

  Interesting premise, fun characters
  
  A bit rough, and could use some more editing (missing, wrong, & occasionally misspelled words ) as well as being a bit wordy and slow for the first third or so of the book. Still, not Pollyanna. The guy/core worked for his gains. I liked his use of foot-/endnotes for most of the stats and screens. I didn’t use them much, but they were great when I wanted them. So, SO much better than a 2-3 page block every chapter (or more) of repeated stats with only minor changes. Got much more fun when he added more people than his core and his ‘game guide’.
• 
  Vincent Archer

  Almost forgot I had read this one.
  
  The Station Core is aimed at a blend of sci-fi and traditional dungeon core stories. It does manage to put a science-fiction veneer on classic fantasy dungeon things. The Collective responsible for the situation appears to be a bunch of furry assholes, and Milton is better off on his own. But the background universe building is not really relevant to the story which follows along classic lines.
  
  The few twists arising from the science-fictional origin of the Dungeon Core are interesting enough to make this a relatively refreshing take on the genre.
• 
  Charles Daniel

  A Technological Dungeon Core Story.
  
  In most of the Dungeon Core genre I have read, until this novel, the Dungeon Core has been a Magically "compressed" or "distilled" human soul encased in a fragile, or not, crystal gem and given the task of creating a dungeon; thus fall firmly into the broad genre of Fantasy. This Dungeon Core story is different in that the human who becomes the Core, Milton, has his mind transferred into a large, powerful, heavily armored, egg shaped machine called a "Station Core." Which pushes this story more towards the broad genre of Science Fiction.
  
  Milton's Core is intended to become the heart and brain of a Battle Station which will defend an interstellar coalition of many species from an implacable enemy. Unfortunately, in war one's plans seldom survive contact with the enemy and thus Milton's Core never arrives at the Station he was intended to command. Instead, the destruction of the ship carrying him leaves his inactive Core hurtling through space for a while . . . a long while . . . before crash landing on an unknown world. The crash landing, or perhaps the attack on the ship which left him drifting through space, has caused severe damage to Milton's Core. Now Milton, awakened as a Station Core for the first time must survive and find the resources he needs to repair the physical damage done to his Core while fending off the hostile native fauna.
  
  This book will likely be enjoyable for fans of the Dungeon Core, LitRPG, Fantasy, and Science Fiction genres and those who enjoy playing RPGs.
• 
  Colin Rowlands

  The setup for this dungeon core book is an interesting approach to the basic premise, you have a gamer from earth being kidnapped and transferred into the station core by one group of aliens (calling themselves pacifists while effectively killing the people they kidnap seems like a stretch) to fight a different set of aliens, before crashing on an entirely different alien world.
  
  One issue with such books is that the early stages can end up being quite repetitive as a new dungeon is limited in what it can do or build and the author uses a number of time skips to avoid this and getting to the point where the series really starts. The cast of characters is fairly small to start out, but are interesting and likeable enough to draw in the reader.
  
  The narrator does a good job overall of enhancing the story with a suitably distinctive range of voices for the characters and deals well with the large amount of stats too.
  
  Overall, a good start to this series and I will be listening to subsequent ones too.
  
  [Note - I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.]
• 
  John

  Very slow, long start
  
  I bought the whole series, without having read the first book, because I really enjoyed another series this author has started. I had to force myself to keep reading for the first 3/4 of the book. To be fair, I love books about personal growth, but I’m ambivalent about the stats. Still, almost no character development, the story was a slow, stagnant, slough, and very little true world building. He first two characters had no depth to their interactions and only the addition of a couple new characters towards the end made me want to read anything else in this series.
• 
  Michael Lynn

  I like Jonathan Brooks writing. I will be reading more of his books but this one did not sit well with me. My biggest complaint has to do with the AI character being so incredibly toxic for no good reason it simply did not serve the story. I also had a little trouble with the combination of magic elements in line with the more technical aspects. Hey it might be just me and I am not meaning to slam the other I just really had trouble with this one. I totally recognize that this is someone with some talent that can tell a great story but on this book it just did not work for me.
• 
  Crissy Moss

  I enjoyed the story, the different mechanics, and the idea behind it. The characters were interesting, and it ended with a satisfying conclusion with just a hint of promise for a new story.
  
  My only complaint is the constant cursing by one of the characters just seemed forced and out of place. The fact that the author draws attention to it by having the main character argue with her about it just means it's more noticeable and annoying. Often it felt like it was creamed in there just to have it rather than making a point.
  
  But otherwise a good book.
• 
  Miche

  interesting premise but…
  
  I honestly hated Alanna. She spouts 4 letter words and sexist slurs with every other breath, so - 1 star.
  
  There were a couple confusing and contradictory pieces of information, which I hope the author will address and update in a future edition.
  
  1. Recycling metals is generally easier than refining ores and creating new alloys.
  2. I didn’t understand the passage of time for the space flight - was it 4000+ years or a few seconds? A sentence explaining this could easily be added.
  
  
• 
  Montgomery

  A fun read
  
  A good, sci-fi take on the dungeon core in a medieval/fantasy setting. Interesting characters. The building gets a bit monotonous in the middle, but there is enough interesting stuff throughout that it works fine. And I LOVED how he out the stat blocks as footnotes. Makes reading much more organic, and I can still look at any of the status screens when desired. Hope this becomes a standard.
• 
  Chris Evans

  One of the better dungeon core books I've read, along with probably the best Sci-Fi LitRPG.
  
  I wasn't terribly fond of the time skips early in the story, but later on it does make sense that some were needed, and it's unlikely to happen much more now that more mortal characters are involved.
  
  I just hope we get to see more of the alien races described at the beginning, they were very creative.
• 
  Topher

  This is one of several dungeon core style litrpg books I've read in the past year - including others from Mr Brooks, and I think I have to come to the conclusion that I just don't like the genre. I enjoyed the writing - the author is a fine wordsmith and appears to have a good editor. I just don't particularly like the genre. That's the fault of the reader, not the plot, the characters, or the author.
• 
  Elizabeth

  I'm going to be honest; I was unable to finish this book. The main character is uninteresting and has no depth, and ALANNA is utterly unlikable (it seems to be her goal to undermine, insult, and degrade the MC in order to "toughen him up", and that's a bunch of bulls***, especially since I get the feeling she's going to be his love interest, if he gets one at all.) I do NOT enjoy reading about abusive relationships. While the premise is interesting, I just can't get past the character.