I caught up on Dungeon Crawler Carl last week. I meant to write out my thoughts but I’ve already failed on my personal goal of writing something every week. But hey just because I feel down doesn’t mean I should give up so here’s my article about the series.

To catch up I read the Bedlam Bride and the Inevitable Ruin. I found both of these books to be a large highlight of the series. Both in the character development that happens and the continued fleshing out of the world. I think here Matt Dinniman hits his stride as an author and it is phenomenal.

First up is the Bedlam Bride. Here Carl and Donut are set up in a 1 to 1 version of the Earth with a trading card games as the loose background. Due to a Donut’s bad geography skill they end up in Cuba instead of the Bahamas. Here Samantha discovers the Bedlam Bride. The Bedlam Bride is a story told to many different children across the universe about insanity, cunning, and planning. Immediately we see her manipulate Samantha and Carl into turning her into a card so she can advance to the next floor. Carl is reluctant to take her with them as her legend and unclear goals make him think rightfully that she can’t be trusted.

The story goes that to look into the Eye of the Bedlam Bride is to go insane. In an interesting twist later in the book when Carl looks into the eye he doesn’t go insane. Instead the metaphor of the river in his mind simple becomes more pronounced implying that he is already insane.

In the second zone Carl makes his way to an old homeless shelter. You see the players are currently in an exact recording of the world on Christmas two weeks before the dungeon first opens. Here he meets with a residual or an alien that was already on the planet before the crawl started. He is given an enhancement that allows him access to the only failsafe around the AI that runs the crawl. This presents him with an interesting option. Either A he can use the failsafe to blow up the sun destroying the planet, killing everyone in the solar system, and greatly crippling the syndicate. This also has the added benefit of ending things on his terms and not having his friends continue to struggle as they’re tortured by alien forces. Option B he can disable to AI’s failsafe and make it so it is unable to be controlled or contained by the syndicate. And Option C he can do nothing leaving control in the hands of the syndicate.

What a dilemma. I think this shows the insanity of Carl because instead of taking the easy victory. Destroying the Crawl and AI, killing half the leadership of the syndicate, and ending the suffering of himself and his friends he decides to disable the AI. He thinks that the AI already has control over them so he can put the syndicate under the same rules saying “Welcome to the games”.

I think this choice is an insane one… He wants to struggle and crawl (Ha) towards his ultimate goal ending this for ever. The river inside of him is something he can’t really control. Because it is him. His rage, and hatred, and strength, and grounding. He chooses not to be swept away by it but to merge with it, to continue feeding it.

In the penultimate fight the AI goes fully rogue and takes images of the loved ones of all our favorite characters and makes them fight a hydra formed of them while the spew insults and attempt to attack the characters psychologically. The battle itself is mid but the prelude where Carl watches his dad be murdered by his new wife in order to protect his new son finally gives pay off to the long build up around Carl’s past.

This only feeds into his river when in the final fight Carl is merged with the Bedlam Bride through the card game mechanic and she takes him over completely. Carving herself into him to carry herself into the next stage while fighting to take over his mind completely.

This book really was the highlight of the series so far. While there are still a lot of issues with the pacing and hiding things from the audience that annoys me the characterization and payoffs for what’s come before were on point. It was hard to stop reading this one.

This left me more disappointed for the next book “The Inevitable Ruin”. Carl and Donut become warlords and fight off the other teams ultimately killing everyone and committing several war crimes in the process. While this book is very fun, and full of good action sequences and fun plans the book focuses on the action and not on the characters.

Sure there’s some back and forth between Juice Box and Louis that’s interesting and Donut struggles a lot with the tension caused by Katia and Donut both having worn the Naga crown but ultimately this book goes all in on the action. While I enjoyed it there isn’t much for me to write about.

All in all I stand by my recommendation to read Dungeon Crawler Carl if you’re into these kinds of books. If you want a manly protagonist who also has real feelings and a lot of explosions this is the book for you.