A Parade of Horribles (Matt Dinniman)

A Parade of Horribles

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 8
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

After the epic chaos of the Faction Wars, the crawlers of Earth have arrived at the tenth floor... those who did not take deals to escape the dungeons early via indentured servitude. For those determined to hold out for better deals after the next floor or two - or those who, like Carl and Donut and their friends, are committed to fighting back against the whole system profiting off Earth's grotesque death throes - the next challenge seems fairly straightforward, almost mundane. It's a seven-heat race where the losing team of each leg is instantly annihilated. Naturally, being the dungeons, there's still plenty of danger: the tracks often have quests and challenges that must be completed before the finish line, and the races are designed to pit each team against each other and break down the camaraderie forged in the Faction Wars. But Carl and Donut are no neophytes to the twisted games they're being forced to play, and every indignity they survive only makes them stronger. It might take divine intervention to stop their quest for vengeance. Unfortunately, the dungeons have no shortage of gods to throw at the crawlers, too... and several of them need no motivation to smash the rebellious crawlers into primordial ooze.
This book includes the eighth installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret," an ongoing bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.

REVIEW:

Wow... that's all I could think to say after I finished this, the last installment currently in print (as of mid-August 2026). After the sprawling and truly epic events of the previous book, Dinniman shifts gears to refocus on the core crawler crew with the more straightforward tenth floor challenge, which is a bit like the old Hanna-Barbera Wacky Races cartoons as filtered through a cracked fun house mirror in a haunted amusement park populated by nightmares. The majority of crawlers who survived the Wars tapped out, and not a single person could possibly blame them; Carl and the others even encourage as many people as they can to take at least a chance at survival over the near-certain deaths awaiting those staying in the game. This reins in some of the character sprawl, though there are still a few new-to-the-reader faces, not just in the NPC teams. But the show runners and the AI are not about to back off or show anything resembling mercy. If anything, they only grow more sadistic, the defiance of the enduring crawlers an insult that must be punished. The AI itself, which is well and truly beyond the control of the ostensible game runners, does not become a friend or ally, but a potentially far more dangerous entity than even its (former) masters imagined. It has its own agenda, and is ruthlessly using both the crawlers and the trapped aliens - the ones it won't let leave the system, many of them the galactic elites who have been profiting off AI-driven planet-killing death games for generations - in pursuit of that agenda. This adds a new challenge, as it's clear that nobody is going to survive this off-the-rails game unless someone can figure out what the AI is after by piecing together seemingly incompatible clues. New secrets and truths are revealed, turning what people thought they knew about the Primal Engines, the AIs behind them, and the galaxy itself on its ear... and revealing just how badly the races of the galaxy have screwed things up by messing with technology they did not understand.
Of course, there's still plenty of room in all this for the humor (if sometimes gallows humor) and heart that's run through the series, the banter and character moments that keep things from spiraling too dark (and which throw those dark moments into greater contrast). Even as Carl and Donut both show some psychological cracks from what they've had to do, they still cling to their humanity, the thing the dungeons are trying their best to rip away. Their relationship is the lifeline they both cling to when they feel overwhelmed, and the one the reader can come back to when the rest of the dungeons look too violent and bleak.
The whole event ends with the Parade of Horribles, a truncated eleventh floor co-opted by the AI and designed to destroy whoever survives the races. It might be the best chance for the crawlers to strike back - or the end of everything they've tried to do and everyone still alive, even the people they thought they were saving. Things wrap up with a truly game-changing finale... and a cliffhanger that I'll have to cling to until the next book drops.
As for the bonus story, this is another shorter installment, but also a pivotal one, reacting to the events that have shaken up the rest of the dungeons. The plight of the wakened NPCs is tied even more closely to that of the crawlers at this point.
It's almost hard to believe that I only picked up the first book at the end of February and binged eight by mid-August, an almost unprecedented rate of series consumption. I just could not stop myself. So now, here I am, sitting not at the end of one of the wildest roller coaster ride I've been on in recent memory, but paused at the top of a long drop into a no doubt twisting, looping, breakneck track. There's a nonzero likelihood I'll be rereading the series alongside whatever books I pick up next, and I haven't had the overwhelming urge to reread a series - especially not so soon after finishing - in some time; the fact that this utterly insane concept works so well for so long is just fascinating to me, and I want to go back to the beginning to see if I can figure out how Dinniman pieced the whole thing together.
(As a closing note, it's worth collecting the hardcover editions if possible; check underneath the dust jackets. It's worth it.)

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