Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Vol. 7

By: Fujino Omori, Suzuhito Yasuda, Andrew Gaippe - translator

Narrated by: Shelley Calene-Black, Bryson Baugus

Having triumphed in the War Game, Lilly, Welf, and Mikoto have forged new bonds with each other and with Bell, and the new-and-improved Hestia Familia is feeling distinctly more familial. But when Bell has to venture into the pleasure quarter of Orario to come to Mikoto's aid, he's soon tangled up in more intrigue than he bargained for. Ishtar Familia owns the night here, and none of Bell's experience can prepare him for their courtesan wiles!

Good Story, Narration is Another Case

Story-wise, this is a great volume. The Pleasure Quarter of Orario is introduced along with the Ishtar Familia. For a quick synopsis, Mikoto hears hears a rumor that a lost childhood friend is working in the pleasure quarter, so trying to be secretive about it, she decides to go investigate. Bell and the others notice that she's acting weird and follow her. Mikoto's suspicions are confirmed as Bell stumbles upon the Renard Haruhime by coincidence. Bell, never visiting this part of of town before and not being aware of what goes on in such a place, gets caught up with the Amazons and their goddess Ishtar. Ishtar has a grudge against Freya, and her finding out about Bell and the fact that Freya has great interest in him sets a whole series of events in motion with Bell and Haruhime at the center of it all.

Like I mentioned, this is a great part of the story, but in my opinion it's ruined by Shelley Calene-Black's narration. If you've made it this far in the series, you know that the narration switches between Bryson Baugus and Calene-Black. Baugus covers the sections written in the 1st person from Bell's point of view (and does an awesome job at it), while Black reads the parts written in the 3rd person. Baugus has good range, and makes each character sound unique and distinct. Black however, makes every female character sound the same so it gets confusing trying to figure out who's speaking sometimes. She doesn't do any better with the male characters. She voices Welf with a weird, angry, out-of-breathe voice that sounds like he's trying to growl while speaking, and she voices Takemikazuchi inconsistently, making him sound like a haughty noble one minute and a out-of-breathe old man the next. She also gets the tone of voices wrong as well. In one instance where Hermes is having a serious discussion explaining the killing stone's intended purpose, she voiced him sounding jovial and almost laughing, which makes you wonder whether or not it's a dire matter they're discussing in the first place.

She does the absolute worst job voicing Phryne, the strongest amazon of Freya Familia. Phryne is a large woman with frog-like features, but she doesn't sound too much like a frog in the show. She is just meant to have a deeper and bit of a forceful voice . Black is a voice actor on the show, so she should know how the character sounds when she speaks (Phryne is voiced by Caitlin Glass who does a great job in the English dub of the show btw). In this book however, she voices Phryne as if she's an old lady who is constantly having the breathe squeezed out of her. As a result, shhhhee-hheeee eee-ends up ta-aalking lllii-iike tthhhii-iiissss. I think Black is trying to mimic her talking as if she is croaking like a frog, but she ends up sounding like an old woman/witch. It gets especially bad when Phryne is angry or fighting. Her voicing is just overall really jarring and takes me out of the story quite often.

On a trip while I was listening to this, my girlfriend mentioned she could tell I was listening to the parts read by Black because my face had a constant grimace, and she saw me wincing and cringing a lot (she's not a fan of her narration as well). I'm not sure if I'll pick up the next Audible volume of this series because I've gotten to a point where I spend more time just waiting for Black's part to be over instead of concentrating on the story itself. It's particularly rough for me because the last 1/3 to 1/2 of the books are usually narrated only by Black because they're written in the 3rd person (which I mentioned earlier are the parts she reads while Baugus reads the parts written in the 1st person).

Other minor nitpicks; she pronounces Haruhime's name like Harrowhime, and misreads a line towards the end of the book and stops half way through the sentence, pauses, and then re-reads the line once again correctly (which is no big deal, but it makes me wonder if whoever is in charge of editing these actually listens through the whole book before greenlighting it).

TLDR:
Great part of the continuing story. Bryson Baugus does a great job with narration, but Shelley Calene-Black not so much in my opinion. Her character voicing is jarring and takes me out of the story quite often.

-Story 4/5
-Baugus's Narration 4/5
-Black's Narration 2/5