I started writing this review six months ago and it’s been sitting in drafts ever since. If you couldn’t tell by the utter lack of posting on this site recently, I’ve been struggling to come up with reviews and my reading has dropped to almost nothing. I picked this series back up to try and jumpstart my interest both in reading fun books and writing reviews that might encourage other people to do the same!
A fair warning — if you haven’t read Dungeon Crawler Carl books 1-3 I don’t recommend reading this review unless you’re cool with spoilers.
With this new book, as is standard, we get a new level to the dungeon and this level features a race of people called the Dramadarians (SP?! I audiobooked) and they are a race of camels who live in a place called Humptown. Humptown could have been a reference to the camel’s humps…. but in true DCC style, this town has a prostitute centric economy for which it gets its name. H’yep!
This level is also split up into a bunch of “bubbles” and each “bubble” is split into four quadrants. It’s a conquer the castle kind of challenge where each group of crawlers has to defeat their quadrant — the land, sky, ground, or water quadrant. When all the quadrants are complete the staircase to the next level will be revealed. It sounds simple but it isn’t. There’s a giant raging goose — HOONNNKKK!!!
There’s also an expansion of the world building and we get hints that it’s expansive. There are so many races out there and they all have their own backstories and relationships. Those alliances and rivalries lead to the crawlers being fucked around with in ways they can’t always predict. We are starting to get hints at Mordecai’s backstory, Gods and Deities are showing up and they are a whole fucking thing, and there are big reveals in the epilogue which had me chomping at the bit to read the next book. At this point I’ve read all 7 that have been published and I’m craving book 8. There are mysteries that have been strung along for a while now, like who is Agatha and what’s her deal? We start to get hints at all these mysteries as well and now that I’ve read all 7 and I’m on a re-reading kick it’s really satisfying to go back through and look at all the hints we had along the way.
Princess Donut continues to be one of my favorite foil characters ever written. Ya know how she’s always wanted to be a star? Yeah, now she’s a bard class and in order for her spells to work she has to sing in key — but she’s tone deaf and that leads to a whole thing where in order to get better she has to practice over and over and over. It’s Carl’s favorite thing. He loves it. I also want to comment on the continued friendship between Carl and Katia and how much I deeply appreciate a completely platonic but nonetheless strong friendship. I kept expecting these two to get together because that’s what the tropes demand, but they keep defying tropes and no romantic feelings have been displayed from either character. I really love it.
What I appreciate most about this series is that each book gets progressively more character-based and the overall tone gets darker and darker. I find the contrast really makes the funny moments pop and the more emotional moments hit harder. The darker undertone and the expanding backstories to these characters makes this a standout read instead of something silly and forgettable. We get a more detailed look into Carl’s past, his parents, his fucked up father, and why he didn’t want pets as an adult — it’s all due to the traumas of his childhood. We start to get hints that this author is going to plumb the depths of humanity both good and bad through an exploration of trauma and loss. I feel like no matter what I say I can’t really explain why I like this series so much… it’s just a series that feels like it was made for me.
There’s such a strong messaging of fairness, justice, and rage against the machine… and I am feeling it so deeply right now. There’s a strong message about raging against the apathy of others, a frothing madness towards those who can watch others in pain and feel nothing. I feel this message to my bones, it goes all the way to the marrow. The decisions are also getting more difficult. Carl’s mantra “you can’t save them all” becomes more and more difficult to accept in some ways, and too easy to accept in others. I appreciate that all the characters in this story go through massive growth and that it’s not just Carl.
The audiobook continues to be masterful.
10/10. No notes.