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The Laboratory

A Futuristic Dungeon Core

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About this listen

Emma is an artificial intelligence with a love of science, insults, and devilish traps. When her systems are booted up, she finds herself in control of a long-abandoned facility in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The world is filled with dangerous threats, granted great powers by the same cataclysm that befell the world.

Emma must balance safety with the desire for test subjects as she brings herself back fully online and stakes out a place in this new world.

©2017 Skyler Grant (P)2017 Skyler Grant Fantasy Fiction Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Superhero LitRPG
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Is there some inspiration from, or does this pay homage to Portal's GLaDOS? I would say so, yes.
But is it does not hinder the telling of unique dungeon-core style story.

The story is also short, but has a fairly high-pace, and progression is made. It is rather open ended, I find it hard to believe the author first intended this to be a one-off. So if you are looking for good value for your purchase, its a bit on the iffy side.

Is it the greatest story and with the best characters ever? No. But its decent enough and with some unique ideas.

I also like the callousness of the MC and harsh reality of this world setting (stuff breaks, people die... and get recycled), but that might not be for everyone.

UPDATE:
After reading another 4 books in the series, I can say that the main problem remains the characters. The story goes to some interesting places, but feel kind of empty due to a lack of character progression. A lot happens in these books, but everyone (especially the humans) hardly ever affected by what happens. They shrug off torture, deaths of friends and enemies with hardly any second thought.

Initially this 'cold, calculating' attitude is ok for the main characters, but over the course of 5 books, it just ends up being stale.

GLaDOS-ish? Yes. It that bad? No.

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