Coast Guard veteran Carl didn't know the world was going to end when he ran out of his Seattle apartment
in his boxers and too-small pink Crocs, trying to catch his ex-girlfriend's purebred Persian show cat,
Princess Donut. If he had, he'd have at least put on pants. But suddenly his apartment building was just...
gone. Squashed out of existence in a blink. Just like every other artificial structure around the world,
along with anyone unfortunate enough to be inside them, leaving him standing in the freezing January cold
with an angry cat in his arms.
Then a voice speaks in his head, along with letters floating before his eyes. Apparently, a galactic
bureaucracy has decided that humans failed to properly claim their home as a sovereign nation, so the
Borant Corporation has arrived to take possession and strip its raw materials. However, they're willing to
give our species a chance to reclaim the planet... if anyone survives eighteen levels of a dungeon-like
reality game that have just been built underground. Oh, and the Syndicate broadcasts these events to
trillions of viewers, with every move and word under constant surveillance, so do try to keep the essential
extinction of humanity interesting for the sake of ratings, or there will be further consequences.
Carl likes a good video game as much as anyone else, but he doesn't want to live through one, let alone
carry along Princess Donut, whom he can hardly abandon to the post-apocalyptic conditions on the surface.
So when he sees a staircase appear, he ventures down, little suspecting what awaits him as a "crawler" once
he enters the first level. Monsters, loot boxes, boss battles, snarky in-game achievements, an all-powerful
AI dungeon master with a foot fetish, a cat who can suddenly talk and cast magic missiles from her eyes...
all this, and more too, lies ahead if he can manage to survive. Beneath it all, he'll find a tangle of
politics and clashing agendas that may spell the end of every living human - or provide unexpected
opportunities to cheat the system and the game-runners out of their prize.
This book contains the first installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing
bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
It's almost impossible not to hear about this explosively popular series in fantasy reading circles
these days, but I wasn't sure it would be my thing. After all, I've been disappointed by popular series
before, and I couldn't work out if it would be too crude for my tastes, if it was a one-trick pony of a
book, or if the humor wouldn't land (as there are few things worse than comedy that isn't hitting the
funny bone). But my new job hasn't exactly gotten off to a spectacular start, and I needed to remind
myself that walking into a building full of books need not trigger an automatic gut-clench of anxiety,
plus I still had a holiday gift card to burn off at Barnes and Noble. So I wandered in one fateful day
and walked out with two titles, one of them Dungeon Crawler Carl... and by that night I'd
already devoured over 100 pages. It's been so long since a book grabbed me that fast that I'd forgotten
what it felt like.
How did it feel? Good. It felt very, very good.
Some writers, dealing with gaming and fan-adjacent subjects, are clearly observing from the sidelines,
having maybe seen a picture of a con or walked past someone playing a game and decided that they could
fill out the rest with assumptions and stereotypes and humor that's thinly-disguised mockery (borderline
bullying in some instances). From the outset, it's clear that Dinnman is not one of those authors. He
understands games and gaming and the culture around them from the inside, and he's laughing with, not at,
devotees, in the vein of Galaxy Quest's take on sci-fi fandom. As someone who grew up with the
Commodore (still considered the top gaming computer for having the most game titles on its platform, last
I looked) and who still enjoys gaming (even if I haven't been able to indulge for a while, in no small
part due to life being a dumpster fire loaded with tiny dumpster fires adrift in a sea of fiery
dumpsters), this put me squarely in Dungeon Crawler Carl's target demographic. From the snarky
in-game descriptors and asides to the stats and the level grinding, this is gaming written by a gamer
through and through. (A real gamer, who enjoys playing the game for its own sake, not a hate gamer...
there is a difference.) The game itself also reveals much about the creators and how they're spinning
the extermination of people on Earth.
But there's much more going on than just looting and leveling and sarcastic in-game achievement
announcements. Even in the midst of the absurdity, Carl feels the weight of the end of the world. When
he looks at Princess Donut, he can't help remembering his ex Beatrice... who is probably dead, along
with everyone else he remembers from his old life. As he watches the numbers of "crawlers" drop each
evening with the recap broadcasts, he knows what that means about the population of Earth and the fates
of his fellow humans, even the ones whose grisly deaths don't make the highlight reels. There's grief
and rage and a desperate need to cling to some manner of humanity in a situation engineered to punish
empathy. When he comes across a group of refugees from a nursing home, he's told more than once that
abandoning them is the wiser choice if he wants to level up high enough to survive the next dungeon
down. (Every dungeon level collapses after a certain time, meaning death for anyone who opts to not
play or simply doesn't make it to a stairwell... each of which is guarded by a boss monster, of
course.) He also encounters crawlers who, like some gamers, decide the best way to level up is picking
off fellow gamers for experience points, even when the "competition" is not just pixel avatars on a
screen but living, breathing human beings just trying to survive the end of the world. As Carl gets
deeper into the "game" and starts encountering some of the administrators running/profiting off the
dungeons, and later the third parties (other galactic clans and factions, talk show hosts, and more),
he gets the bigger picture of just how massive the machine is that perpetuates atrocities like the one
he's experiencing, the profiteering off genocide and the encouragement of more and more sick and
brutal displays of power over the powerless, a self-perpetuating engine of escalating horrors. There
are strong shades of The Hunger Games (and too many incidents in the real world) here...
I also need to make a few notes about Princess Donut. Dinniman displays some decent understanding of
cat showing with her; Donut is a grand champion with numerous ribbons, and she knows it, but there's
more to her than just a prima donna (or the standard, lazy stereotype that cats are selfish and hate
everyone). Once she gains the power of speech, she becomes a decently rounded character in her own
right. Yes, she's got absurdly high charisma (if at the cost of a weakened constitution), she can be
vain, and she yearns for attention, but she's also a solid companion and loyal to Carl, and the two
become a true team in their journeys as they figure out how to balance their strengths and
weaknesses. She even comes around to assisting Carl when he chooses to attempt kindness and
compassion over the brutality the game constantly encourages in its crawlers, and she grows as a
character even in the space of this book. They succeed (or occasionally fail) together.
There are other characters, of course, some set up as villains and some as potential friends, but
most everyone has a hidden side or complications that round them and their motives out. Hints are
given about how other extinction "games" have gone; the Borant Corporation is but one of several
galactic superpowers who conquer unsuspecting planets and make their natives run a rigged gauntlet
on the feeblest promises of survival, all for "entertainment" and profit. (They pretty much admit
that the actual value of the minerals they take is barely a drop in the bucket.) Much of this, of
course, will likely come more into play as the series progresses, but enough is set up here to be
intriguing and add extra complications and weight to many situations Carl and Princess Donut face in
their involuntary dungeon crawl.
At the end, Dinniman offers part one of an ongoing story about one of the side characters
encountered, further fleshing out not only the world of the game creators and the crawlers but the
"monsters", who are all reshaped and repurposed beings forced to endure the games as well, offering
further hints of machinations behind the scenes that will bear fruit further down the line.
If there's any real downside, it may be some of the time spent explaining the game mechanics and
other minutiae to the reader and Carl, as his "trainer" Mordecai - himself a survivor of his own
world's version of the games - fills in details. I expect anyone who hasn't grown up steeped in
games with stat screens and skill trees would be confused or bored by the focus on this. Otherwise,
I can't think of any drawbacks worth noting.
I was a little on the fence about whether to go with a four-and-a-half star rating. The Great rating
is one I don't tend to hand out willy-nilly; there needs to be that extra something to kick a book
over the top. The full fifth star was awarded not just because I stayed up late to finish, but
because, at 12:05 AM, I was seriously contemplating ordering the next book in the series instead of
going to bed. Maybe I'll just have to get back to Barnes and Noble with my next paycheck, assuming
life doesn't devour it all before I can get there. The way work has been going, I'm going to need
another reminder soon that rooms of books can be pleasant companions...
Coast Guard veteran Carl and his cat companion, Princess Donut, along with Donut's new dinosaur
pet Mongo, have made it to the third level of the dungeon in the "game" that will determine
humanity's fate on the planet they used to call home. They, and the diminishing number of other
"crawlers", now have to decide which race they'll transform into (if they don't opt to remain
human) and pick a class, decisions that may directly affect their odds of survival. But Carl and
Donut both know by now that many of the choices in the game mean little when the powers behind it,
and the greater field of galactic politics, are really pulling the strings. Even as they have no
choice but to play out their roles, fighting monsters and gaining levels and figuring out the
ever-evolving game mechanics, Carl and Donut are still determined to do everything they can to
hold onto their decency and, if possible, break the system that's trying so very hard to break
them.
This book also contains the second installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing
bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
I never expected to enjoy the first book in this series as much as I did, and happily the
sequel both lives up to the promise of the first one and builds on it brilliantly. Carl and Donut
have both changed since they first ventured down the stairwell into the first level. Donut's
intellectual evolution since gaining the ability to speak continues, as her thoughts grow more
sophisticated, though there are still several blind spots, particularly regarding Carl's ex Bea
(whom Donut still hopes will turn up someday and they can all be a family again, even as Carl
knows the truth). Mongo, Donut's new pet, is also growing and leveling, becoming a useful asset
to their little team. Their trainer Mordecai finds his role transformed from a mere trainer to
someone who can provide more support, though he still has secrets related to his own run as a
dungeon crawler and he may have his own agenda. And Carl himself struggles to juggle the many
hats and obligations foisted onto him: celebrity dungeon crawler, co-conspirator with Mordecai,
object of a creepy foot fetish by the dungeon-running AI (which might be going rogue), and
(hopefully) survivor of a system so rigged that not a single "crawler" from a single species
subjected to the cruel and twisted death gauntlet of the dungeons has ever succeeded and won
the promised sovereignty of their home worlds back. He also picks up a few new allies and -
naturally - more rivals, both within the game and without.
The level itself manages to not repeat the first floors too much, as Dinniman introduces new
game mechanics and twists. The third floor brings not only the potential to permanently change
species, but also quests and the dangerous "elite" class of non-player characters - which are,
in true dungeon fashion, part of much larger franchises and interests, running
semi-independently of the whole death-gauntlet-for-humanity main event; becoming entangled in
one of their ongoing story arcs can make things infinitely more complicated and dangerous, but
it might also lead to certain advantages if a crawler manages to play their cards right, and
Carl and Donut both have clued into the need to play the game outside the dungeon at least as
keenly as they play the one inside. The end lives up to the title, setting up even more
explosive problems for the third installment.
As for the serialized bonus story, this one continues the tale as it explores some of the
behind-the-scenes manipulations and mechanics, foreshadowing even greater problems in the
making should any crawlers live long enough to encounter them. Even the NPCs are victims in the
dungeons, only given enough tools and freedoms to develop a hatred of crawlers and both the
willingness and ability to kill them.
The very slight dip in the ratings is simply due to the fact that this time I knew what I was
getting when I picked it up, and didn't have that extra kick of surprise. It also flirts with
excessive entanglements with all the players, species, factions, galactic powers, and other
forces and their various complicated histories, all of which become increasingly important to
Carl's and Donut's survival. It remains a very readable and highly enjoyable book, with much
more to it than one might expect.
Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, and their new companion Katia barely survived the third floor of the
apocalyptic dungeon whose outcome will determine the fate of humanity... and, in doing so, they made
even more enemies than they already had. But their antics are earning them great ratings across the
galaxy, and with it opportunities for lucrative sponsors - and the team is going to need every
possible advantage they can get, because the fourth floor is a tangled mess... literally.
The "Iron Tangle" is a vast network of railways, from old steam engines to modern monorails, running
in endless loops. Among the labyrinth of landings is a puzzle to unravel before this floor, too,
collapses and kills everyone who hasn't found a stairway down. Carl remains determined to save as
many fellow crawlers as he can, but many people still don't trust him, others want to break up the
dream team, and being on the top ten list has put a price on all their heads.
This book contains the third installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus
story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
The third installment maintains the momentum of the previous books, maintaining the action, the
humor, and the tension. Carl and Donut are an inseparable team, but they still have secrets from each
other, and Katia is still an unknown quantity in many ways; knowing that she came to them under
misleading pretenses, can she be trusted to side with them when the chips are down? Their
mentor/manager Mordecai, meanwhile, still has secrets from his long and storied history, making him a
vital resource... but he, too, has his own agenda, and when a mishap knocks him out of the game for a
good stretch of the dungeon, Carl and company must learn to stop relying on him so much. Meanwhile,
the politics behind the dungeon "game" itself grow more perilous, as Donut and Carl have managed to
make some very powerful enemies. And within the game, of course, there's a whole new slate of "mobs"
to battle - and battle they must, if they mean to survive.
Amid all the action and achievements, Carl and his companions never lose sight of the true grim
desperation of their circumstances. This is not fun and games for them, or a chance to be the video
game hero of their childhood dreams, but a nightmare they cannot wake from, awash in a rising sea of
blood, and the only way to keep one's head above water is to cling all the harder to that core of
humanity - the thing the dungeon masters are truly trying to destroy in each and every crawler. At its
heart, the story is a tragedy, extinction and unimaginable depravity as entertainment, and not a single
person or monster the team encounters isn't scarred by that. Every time Carl thinks he's found a way to
outwit the system, though, the AI and the showrunners tighten the chains, but he discovers that
resistance is indeed possible, and he is not as alone as he sometimes feels.
There are times when the Iron Tangle gets a little, well, tangled, a wash of trains and stations and
numbers that feel impossible to keep straight, but it's not necessary to map it all out in one's head
to follow the story. The number of side characters is also growing, along with their attendant
entanglements. But things sort themselves out if one sits back and lets the tale unfold. Once more, it
ratchets up to a tense, and not entirely bloodless or clean, finale, setting up the next
adventure/dungeon nicely. Everyone's growing across the board, creating a dynamic team.
As for the bonus story, it adds another character from the book and yet another wrinkle. The whole is
foreshadowing developments later down the line, but manages not to be too precious or coy about it.
The "game" has always been much bigger than the poor crawlers forced to endure (or, almost inevitably,
not endure) its torments, and the bonus story highlights the greater scope and the other lives the
game masters are destroying.
It goes without saying that I'll be reading on eagerly, though I'm trying to pace myself; my budget's
taken a real beating this month, and I don't want to outread what I've stockpiled of the series before
I can buy more.
Reluctant dungeon crawler Carl, his ex-girlfriend's cat Princess Donut, Donut's pet dinosaur Mongo,
and their partner Katia have survived to reach the fifth level, and once again find a fresh challenge
and even more devious traps awaiting them. The surviving human crawlers have been scattered into a
series of bubble-like microhabitats, each with four castles that need to be conquered. Sounds pretty
straightforward, but nothing in the dungeons is ever straightforward. As before, there are deeper
layers of lore, ever-escalating boss monster threats, and situations specifically engineered by the
game runners to maximize suffering and boost body counts... and that's not taking into account the
increasingly destabilizing effects of intragalactic political clashes and an AI that's increasingly
unpredictable. But, even as they face dirigible-piloting gnomes and shapeshifting changelings and
undead gods, one thing remains the same: Carl is determined to defy the game masters and strike back
any way he can, even at the cost of his own life.
This book contains the fourth installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus
story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
For a series that could easily fall into repetition and "level grinding," Dinniman manages to keep
things fresh and interesting, ratcheting up the stakes and the challenges and growing the characters
in unexpected ways. Carl and company make some new allies (and enemies), but they're also learning
enough to start resisting more effectively, finding ways to circumvent the increasingly intrusive
observers (both show-runners and viewers). The party's reputation is a mixed bag when it comes to
convincing other crawlers to aid them, and the bounties don't exactly help engender trust, but they
still try their best to avoid antagonizing more people; they have enough active enemies, some of which
have become terrifyingly overpowered (and terrifyingly free of any lingering morality about helping the
aliens exterminate the species). The expanding list of named crawlers again sometimes threatens to
overwhelm at times, but Dinniman has a way of jogging the reader's memory about who they are and where
they fit in.
Within the game, the horrors of what's happening to the humans and the NPCs grows even more grotesque
and unbearable, and Carl and Donut find their most useful outside contacts threatened directly - the
political game of the greater galaxy is potentially every bit as twisted, sadistic, and cruel as
anything within the dungeons. Worse, the AI's fetishization of Carl moves from a peculiar quirk to a
potentially game-destabilizing obsession, further signs that the Syndicate's corner-cutting rush job
going into this "season" is causing greater chaos and danger to everyone involved - but at this point
too many people are too deeply invested to pull the plug, assuming the plug can even be pulled. And
it's pulling great ratings, so why would they?
As before, there are some humorous moment, some crude (if funny) bits, and all manner of violent
battles and unique monsters and intricate puzzles that have me in awe of Dinniman's ability to craft
involving but ultimately understandable game elements (not to mention how he can plant tiny details
that end up coming into play later down the line; the man must have a series bible the size of a small
planet by now), but there's also a very human heart and tragedy underneath it all that keeps the whole
concept from flying completely off the rails and beyond caring about. All of this ratchets up to a
finale where Carl and Donut prove that they're ready to step up and stop simply letting the dungeon's
horrors happen to them.... just when the epilogue promises a fresh monkey wrench about to be thrown
into the works.
The fourth installment of the ongoing bonus story brings in yet another group of NPCs, further
exploring the lives of the NPCs recruited to craft a death-trap level deep in the dungeons for any
survivors who defy the odds to get that far down. Not all of them are buying the party line about a
promised paradise beyond the end of the game, and more trouble is brewing even as the game up above is
spiraling further out of the creators' control.
All in all, this series just keeps me riveted - enough that I found myself pre-ordering the eighth
installment even before I'd finished reading the fourth. Since that book just arrived today, I may do
something I rarely do: buckle down for a solid, back-to-back series binge read. If I manage to sneak a
shorter title or two in between, I may, but I'm really getting invested at this point, and it's so
very nice to have something that truly makes me excited anymore.
Since the start of the dungeons, Carl and the other crawlers have not only been prey for various
"mobs" and NPCs, but subject to the whims of the game sponsors and other outside influences. But
before, those outsiders could not directly interfere or enter the dungeons (save as embodied in
other forms).
On the sixth floor, everything changes.
The Hunting Grounds see the crawlers subject not just to increasingly-deadly monsters and quests,
but to hunters from the greater galaxy, come to collect bounties or simply trophies and bragging
rights, as well as valuable loot for the upcoming ninth floor faction wars. It all culminates in the
Butcher's Masquerade, a grand party - complete with pet show and talent competition - to close out
the level... and, not incidentally, pick off the top crawlers to shake things up for future floors.
Carl and Donut already have made enemies among the political elite, even as they've gained countless
followers and fans. This puts a target on their heads, and the hunters are eager to take a shot.
But Carl, Donut, and their other allies are not the same people they were when they wandered down
that first stairwell from the devastated surface of Earth. If the hunters think the crawlers are
going to die easily, then they haven't been paying attention.
This book contains the fifth installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus
story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
Many series either plateau or drop off by the fifth book. Once again, Dinniman astounds.
Carl, Donut, and the others are not at all the same people they were at the start of the series,
not always in good ways. Carl remains determined to resist all efforts to break him, but he and his
morals have been distinctly bent by the needs of survival, even as his rage at the dungeon masters
grows ever greater. He's taking bigger risks, and they sometimes blow up in his face, or the faces
of the people he talked into trusting him. In the previous floor, he and Donut stopped being mere
victims of the dungeon and started fighting back (though, of course, they're still stuck playing
the "game" even as they plot acts of sabotage and rebellion). Here, with the faces of actual
enemies before him in a setting where he has power - unlike the moments before when they've been
transported to talk shows and other settings for grotesque interviews or game shows - he finally
has a chance to unleash some of the rage that's been building within him from the start... but the
game masters, of course, have ways of retaliating.
Donut, too, is not the cat she once was, and anyone who dismisses her soon learns that, long before
they were bred for cat shows and companionship, cats were natural hunters. But her mind is no longer
that of a pure animal, and she's feeling the stress, shock, and trauma every bit as much as Carl,
even as she struggles to articulate it. Her increasingly human intelligence is also shown in how she
remembers her life before the dungeons, which comes to the forefront when they encounter a face from
their past. The dungeon throws an extra low blow at her when it brings in her old beau Gravy Boat,
a.k.a. "Ferdinand," the neighbor's orange tom, now enhanced, brainwashed and turned into an NPC
familiar of the floor's ultimate boss. Carl and Donut know full well the twisted truth behind
NPCs, how even those with familiar faces are no longer, and never will be again, the people they once
were, but that doesn't make it easier to see one's family members, lovers, or even fallen crawlers
"return"... which is, of course, quite intentional. The games have always had many layers -
entertainment, blood sport, political commentary, and more - but first and foremost they are designed
to inflict as much physical and psychological damage on the involuntary "crawlers" before their
deaths as possible. It's thrown into surreal perspective when Carl is forcibly recruited to appear
(holographically) at CrawlCon, a convention for fans of the dungeon crawler season. While Donut
revels in her fan base, Carl cannot help feeling repulsed by the packed rooms full of people who are,
in their own ways, cheering for the torture and death of everyone on his planet, despite all the
cosplay and fan art professing their affection... and, of course, it's one more trap set up by the
creators, another way to both psychologically mess with him and create more enemies and complications
that will haunt him and his allies further into the dungeon, especially concerning the mantids.
The floor itself, the Hunting Grounds, changes up the formula again. The addition of the hunters adds
a fresh wrinkle on top of the new monsters and quests and the backstories. Carl also has to reckon
with the bargain he made with the elite Signet and the production company behind her show (that she
is blissfully unaware of, being an NPC)... but the show is not the safety net he'd hoped, and may be
a greater danger than an asset. There's also the goddess-possessed decapitated sex doll head from the
previous floor, Samantha, who is becoming more of a character, if one driven by her own agenda and
with unreliable motives. And the other crawlers have their own stories and fates, particularly the
enhanced goat Prepotente and his former shepherd Miriam Dom. Donut and the goat have a particular
bond, being the only enhanced animal crawlers, but Prepotente gets a particularly unpleasant shock
that changes him in ways nobody anticipated, and which Donut can't help him with. Needless to say,
the crawler cast thins significantly even before the Butcher's Masquerade finale, which provides a
truly gory and spectacular ending to a brutal level, complete with a dinosaur dance line.
Meanwhile, the fifth chapter of the bonus story introduces another new character and angle on the
ongoing arc of the NPCs building their revenge dungeon on the eighteenth floor, not all of whom
believe in the promise of paradise beyond the games. But even here, the AI and game masters revel in
cruelty and torment, yanking hope away even when that hope was barely a glimmer in the darkness.
I kicked this back up to a full five stars because of the plot twists and developments that ramped
up the stakes even higher than before, and some truly heartbreaking moments and lines amid some
bright spots and hilarity. There is still a bit of name sprawl and political tangle to navigate, but
nothing I couldn't read around or past and pick up the gist. I might take a short break to read a
novella before the sixth installment, which is a whopper of a book (north of 800 pages), but I'm
looking forward to where things go from here.
Every floor of the dungeons has been designed to break not only the bodies but the wills and spirits of the
surviving humans, and the harder Carl and Donut and the others resist, the more sadistic the "game" becomes.
The eighth level is dedicated to reminding all of the crawlers just what was lost when the aliens took over.
It's a "tribute" to the last days of free Earth, where the crawlers move through recorded, ghostly versions of
the surface world nations in the days leading up to the end of everything... where people cannot be interacted
with, but physical objects like cars can still be deadly. Also, the creators and AI have recreated many of the
local monsters of folklore and legend for each locale, from Irish banshees to Pacific Northwest sasquatches to
the myriad deadly demons of Japan. But this time, there's another game at play: the crawlers not only need to
fight these new mobs, but take at least six powerful monsters for "totems" in a card game that will unfold in
the second phase of the level, one that will determine who gets to proceed to the ninth floor and who dies
here and now. With the way this crop of crawlers has already messed with the systems (and meddled in
intragalactic politics and profit margins), the creators clearly have no intention of letting any crawler
survive to reach the Faction Wars of the ninth level, meaning to make their deaths as painful and humiliating
as they possibly can... but the "Princess Posse" won't go down without a fight, and may find some unexpected
allies even as they unearth new enemies and complications.
This book contains the sixth installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus story set
elsewhere in the dungeons.
Review
What else can I really say about this series? Dinniman delivers yet another astounding, sometimes horrific,
sometimes hilarious outing for Carl, Donut, and the rest of the crew. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
maintains the momentum of the previous installments admirably, building on prior developments in the greater
arcs and creating new complications that will no doubt come back to haunt the characters in future
installments, even as the cast yet again thins by a few notable names. Carl and Donut are drawn deeper into
the drama between the "gods" of the dungeon world and the greater galactic political nightmare, even as the
already-unstable AI slips a few more notches away from sanity and out of the game runners' control. They're
both getting better at juggling the demands of life in the dungeon with the need to play the larger game,
especially now that they've secured an official spot in the Faction Wars on the next floor, but that only
puts them in more danger, creating more ways for enemies to strike at them. It can be a bit sprawling and
overwhelming, but generally one can ride it out and trust Dinniman to know what he's doing, which so far he
seems to. More is also coming out about the origins of the "Primal" AI systems that are used to create the
reality-altering bubbles in which the dungeon games occur, and how even the people running the show are
unaware just how massively they've blundered in mishandling tech they still do not truly understand.
For the in-book arc of the eighth floor, the dungeons find new ways to twist the knife in the guts of the
surviving crawlers, forcing them to witness just what it was that they lost when the aliens arrived and the
dungeons appeared. Each have been placed deliberately to endure encounters with ghosts of their past, both
as memory phantoms playing out the recording of the final free days of the species and as resurrected and
twisted versions of family and loved ones that they're forced to confront... but first the crawlers have to
fight their way through hordes birthed from the collective imaginations and fears of humanity in the form
of legends and monsters and other iconic ideas made flesh (including an "Uzi Jesus," the assault
rifle-bearing, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, enemy-crushing, and hate-spewing embodiment of a church gone so
far off the rails it wouldn't even recognize its purported founder). These bring their own complications
and side-quests, as well as unexpected opportunities if a crawler is clever enough about the (literal)
cards dealt them. As for the card game, I don't play the sort of games that inspired this, but I could
follow the gist of the action if I just let things play out; I'm sure I'd have gotten much more out of it
if I were more familiar with the intricacies of combat card games.
As I've come to expect from the series, the action just keeps building to a truly explosive finale, which
entails some sacrifices but also offers a faint glimmer of hope going ahead, that maybe Carl and company
can indeed survive what's ahead... at least for one more floor. The epilogue, of course, promises more
wrenches in the works, as does the sixth installment of the bonus story.
It goes without saying that the seventh book is on deck, to be started as soon as I can clear a little
breathing space in a summer that's already overloaded even though it just technically started.
The Faction Wars are traditionally a place where the galactic elite get to play at war, capturing castles
and seizing territory, sending countless mercenaries and NPCs to their dooms and picking off most of however
many unfortunate crawlers manage to survive to the ninth floor of the dungeons. But there hasn't been a crawl
like this season before. Now, instead of being outside the carnage as usual, the warlords are now themselves
vulnerable to the maiming and death they usually inflict on underlings. There's also a new wrinkle: the
changeling NPCs, now wakened to their true nature, have claimed a seat at the table. With an AI that's well
and truly beyond anyone's control now calling the shots, the only guarantee is that nobody is safe - making
everyone that much more desperate, and dangerous.
Carl and Donut have managed to help keep a record number of crawlers alive this far, but the Faction Wars are
going to be a bloodbath no matter what they do. They get unexpected help from offworlder allies - former
crawlers, each of whom endured the devastation of their own homeworlds and indentured servitude in crawls to
earn some semblance of freedom. But these new allies also bring new complications, not to mention old
vendettas. Top that off with further entanglements with the volatile dungeon gods, and the slender thread of
luck that's kept Carl and Donut alive this far may finally snap.
This book includes the seventh installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Club," a bonus story set elsewhere
in the dungeons.
Review
What more can I possibly say about this series? Once again, Dinniman manages to maintain the addictive
magic that sucked me into this series, its mixture of humor, cultural callbacks, and cutting moments of
trauma and depth. The cast and associated interpersonal complications (and lore, both in the greater galaxy
and within the dungeons) continue to grow, sometimes bordering on unwieldy, but it all comes together
enough to ride out any moments of confusion. Victories are hard-won and not at all guaranteed; Carl, Donut,
and their allies make some mistakes along the way with serious repercussions. Carl also has to learn to
step back and let other people help out, including Donut. Still, they remain determined in their mission
to bring the pain visited upon Earth to the people responsible, though their vow to remain unbroken by
the torments of the dungeons faces some serious threats; it is not truly possible to remain unbent or
unaltered, physically or mentally, by the dungeons, as their interactions with the former crawlers reveals
all too clearly. There's a saying among them, that everyone who enters the dungeons ultimately dies there,
and one way or another that seems grimly true. Yet there is still hope, and more than a few humorous
moments to keep the darkness from overwhelming the characters (or the reader).
Like the previous books, the central premise of the floor itself is different enough to keep monotony
from setting in. The war "games" of the ninth level demand new tactics, particularly if Carl and Donut
want to keep not only themselves alive, but save the NPCs who have helped them so much already (even if
calling them true allies might be a bit of a stretch; the changelings still have their secrets and their
own agenda, as does everyone involved in the Faction Wars). There's also the matter of the curse Donut
inherited when she first donned the purple tiara at the start of the dungeon, the one that obligates her
to eliminate all heirs of the naga Blood Sultanate in order to leave this floor of the dungeon... further
complicated when fellow crawler and close friend Katia revealed that she, too, ended up with the same
curse, meaning only one of them can survive. And Carl still carries the burden of the Eye of the Bedlam
Bride, which constantly threatens to break free of his control and destroy everything he has tried to
build, every plan he has attempted to put into action to get as many people through the Faction Wars
alive as possible. It all makes for a very high-octane installment, after some slower setup at the start
of the dungeon floor, building to yet another spectacular, complication-riddled finale.
As for the bonus story, this installment is notably shorter, but marks a very sharp turning point in the
plot.
All in all, I quite enjoyed this outing, and will be queueing up the eighth book (the last currently
published, as of late July 2026).
It was 2 AM on a cold winter night in Seattle when Coast Guard vet Carl watched the world end. He'd run
outside in nothing but his boxers and a pair of too-small pink crocs after Princess Donut, the award-winning
Persian who belonged to his ex Beatrice, escaped, so he could only watch in shock as every building suddenly
was squashed out of existence, along with everyone and everything inside (including his pants). A booming
voice informs everyone that aliens have arrived to take the planet's minerals, but humans could regain
control of their world... if anyone dares brave the eighteen levels of the dungeon "game" that have been
created underground. Carl didn't even want to do it, but he and Donut will die of exposure if they don't get
out of the frigid air, so when a stairwell opens nearby he ventures down, hardly expecting how his life is
about to change...
This volume collects the first thirteen chapters of the webtoon based on Matt Dinniman's novel, Dungeon
Crawler Carl
Review
Yes, I'm on a bit of a Carl kick at the moment (so sue me, I seriously need something to enjoy with the
way everything's going), so I went ahead and sprang for this graphic novel adaptation. The story sticks
pretty close to the book, covering the first third or so of Dungeon Crawler Carl, and was clearly
made with the author's input. The only major change that I noticed is that Donut is now a colorpoint (mostly
white) cat instead of a tortoiseshell, a perfectly understandable compromise for the medium (torties being
far more complicated to consistently ink and color, plus the simpler markings of a colorpoint make expressions
easier to render and read). The art, effects, and overall layout and conventions reflect more manga influences
than I usually read in my admittedly-limited graphic novel experience, but do a decent job getting ideas and
emotions across.
That said, I do have a few gripes. The size is a little smaller than I'd hoped, being roughly eight inches by
five and a half inches, which can make some of the text a little hard to read. Speaking of hard to read,
several of the dungeon announcements, such as the AI's often-hilarious "achievements" for various tasks, are
printed in fine white lettering on gold/orange backgrounds. Either my copy is slightly off true in color
alignment, or it's just plain too small and with too poor contrast, because a good third at least of these
announcements I could not read; the text is just too grainy even with a magnifier. There's no real gutter at
the inner margins of the pages, which also cuts into images and text in ways that affect readability; I can't
open the thing flat enough to see it all without damaging the spine or pages. I'm also unsure how well I'd be
following it if I didn't already know the story (again, in part due to bits being a little tough to read).
I'm not sure it picked the best point to end, not really being at a conclusion or a cliffhanger but just in
the middle of things. And there were times where the panel layout and progression wasn't quite clear, though I
expect this is down to me not reading enough manga-influenced material to be familiar with how they flow
compared to more "Western" graphic novel styles.
Still, for all that, it's still a fun story that doesn't stint on the emotional weight, and the visual aspect
highlights both the comic absurdity and the overall darkness of what's happening to Carl, Donut, and the
world.
