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The Adorable Dungeon Master #1
The Adorable Dungeon Master: Volume 1
Lucia Morales, a 22-year-old studying to be an interpreter, loved to play a mobile game full of cute characters in her spare time. But when she was struck by a stray bullet from a gang war, she was reborn as Lilac Grimwood, her adorable avatar in her favorite game! Unfortunately, the world she wakes up in isn’t the cutesy world of her game—it’s somewhere much more grim, a dark forest full of grotesque animals and hostile monsters. But with Lilac’s power to create dungeon towers and summon allies, she will tame the wilderness and turn it into something much, much cuter. And when humans from the nearby town try to manipulate her and take over her forest, she’ll show them what the Queen of Cute can do!
The Bookwalker Prize winner in the first-ever J-Novel Club Original LN Contest!
The Bookwalker Prize winner in the first-ever J-Novel Club Original LN Contest!
- GenresLight Novel
327 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 15, 2025
3 people are currently reading
3 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 7, 2025
It’s interesting to see J-Novel Club branching into indie publishing. This title was the BookWalker Prize winner in the first-ever J-Novel Club Original Light Novel Contest, and overall it was an enjoyable experience.
It’s an isekai told from a Western perspective, with a likable main character of Latine descent whose new form also proudly reflects her brown skin, which is a refreshing change of pace. She doesn’t waste any time creating the kind of world she wants to live in and actively seeks out positive connections with others. Even though it’s about a hundred pages longer than most light novels, it still reads quickly. That said, I found it hard to believe this was just Volume 1. By the time I reached the epilogue, I felt satisfied and ready to move on. The story feels fairly complete as it is, and I’m not sure where it could even go from here without a major time skip or a completely new setting.
What drags the book down are the moments when the author tries too hard to force in light novel tropes that don’t mesh with the rest of the writing. For example, the repeated comments about the main character’s chest size or her long internal monologues about how cute or hot someone is go on for paragraphs. Those moments stand out because the rest of the prose is so direct and straightforward. Those strange, out-of-place quirks are maybe the only things that make it feel like a light novel rather than a polished LitRPG you’d find on Royal Road or a similar site. I understand why they’re there, but they also feel like they’re holding the book back.
To be clear, I still liked the book, but those awkward and imported tropes kept me from really loving it. That’s part of what makes Western attempts at isekai and reincarnation stories so interesting. They can carry the genre’s spirit while leaving behind the elements that don’t always translate well, and in doing so, make the genre more diverse and inclusive.
It’s an isekai told from a Western perspective, with a likable main character of Latine descent whose new form also proudly reflects her brown skin, which is a refreshing change of pace. She doesn’t waste any time creating the kind of world she wants to live in and actively seeks out positive connections with others. Even though it’s about a hundred pages longer than most light novels, it still reads quickly. That said, I found it hard to believe this was just Volume 1. By the time I reached the epilogue, I felt satisfied and ready to move on. The story feels fairly complete as it is, and I’m not sure where it could even go from here without a major time skip or a completely new setting.
What drags the book down are the moments when the author tries too hard to force in light novel tropes that don’t mesh with the rest of the writing. For example, the repeated comments about the main character’s chest size or her long internal monologues about how cute or hot someone is go on for paragraphs. Those moments stand out because the rest of the prose is so direct and straightforward. Those strange, out-of-place quirks are maybe the only things that make it feel like a light novel rather than a polished LitRPG you’d find on Royal Road or a similar site. I understand why they’re there, but they also feel like they’re holding the book back.
To be clear, I still liked the book, but those awkward and imported tropes kept me from really loving it. That’s part of what makes Western attempts at isekai and reincarnation stories so interesting. They can carry the genre’s spirit while leaving behind the elements that don’t always translate well, and in doing so, make the genre more diverse and inclusive.
December 2, 2025
It starts off nicely and promisingly, different from many similar stories. But towards the end, the long-winded writing style starts to get a bit tedious at times.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews