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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This Inevitable Ruin (Matt Dinniman)

This Inevitable Ruin

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 7
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

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).

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Houses With a Story (Seiji Yoshida)

Houses With a Story: A Dragon’s Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore

Seiji Yoshida, translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

From the mountaintop sanctuary of a dedicated astronomer to a modern bookshop whose proprietor is more than he seems, from a Victorian mansion with a playful young ghost to the dwelling of a dragon tamer who carries the mail across the mountains, artist Seiji Yoshida presents numerous fantastical homes with hints of the stories behind them and the people (or spirits) who live within.

REVIEW:

With strong shades of the whimsicality of Studio Ghibli films and the fantastical locales that feel so real you could step into them presented by James Gurney in his Dinotopia series, Houses With a Story is precisely what the title promises: a series of pictures and cutaways presenting all manner of imagined homes and imagined characters in imagined yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. These are the kind of imagination-stirring, thought-provoking images that one could pore over for hours, inspiring tales and perhaps compelling one to draw original homes and characters of one's own. At the end, Yoshida includes some sketches and a walkthrough of his art process for further inspiration.
That said, there were a few quibbles - nothing truly awful, but a few little nits and itches that held it down a bit in the ratings. For one thing, the "stories" are uneven; some locales have plenty of extra images and ideas about them, while others are there and done in a single page, as though the artist were less invested or interested. For another, I borrowed this via my library and the Hoopla app, and digital was perhaps not the best choice. Though my tablet is not top-of-the-line, it's not underpowered or underpixeled by any means, yet some of the "zoom" images included to show details had poor resolution, and navigation was sometimes confusing. Also, there was a certain sameness that settled in; there were a few outliers that were wildly imaginative, but many of the others started feeling... I suppose "safe" and "familiar" are the best words, not exploring the far corners of imagination but sticking to what was clearly familiar territory for the artist.
On the whole, though, this is a fun, undemanding book to page through on a lazy afternoon.

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The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Matt Dinniman)

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 6
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

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.

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Dungeon Drawler Carl: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1 (Matt Dinniman et al.)

Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Graphic Novel, Volume 1

The Dungeon Crawler Carl Graphic Novel series, Issues 1 - 13
Matt Dinniman (author and creator), Aethon (creator), and Actus (creator), illustrations by Laurel Pursuit Studios
Vault Comics
Fiction, Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Humor/Media Tie-in/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

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 13 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.

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The Butcher's Masquerade (Matt Dinniman)

The Butcher's Masquerade
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 5
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: 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.

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The Gate of the Feral Gods (Matt Dinniman)

The Gate of the Feral Gods
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 4
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: 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.

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The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Matt Dinniman)

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 3
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: 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 core, 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.

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Project Hail Mary (Andy Weir)

Project Hail Mary
Andy Weir
Ballantine Books
Fiction, SciFi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: Dr. Ryland Grace wakes on a spaceship with no memory of how he got there, let alone why he's there at all. Two corpses are all that remains of the rest of the crew. When he discovers that the nearest star isn't the sun he's known all his life, things get even stranger... but as fragmentary memories surface, he realizes just how dire his situation is.
It all started when the sun began dimming inexplicably. When the culprit was discovered to be a form of microscopic life entirely unlike anything seen on Earth, a top team of experts recruited Ryland - once a prominent scientist who wrote a controversial thesis on hypothetical extraterrestrial life possibilities, now a middle school teacher who shuns academia - to study the "Astrophage" and, hopefully, find a cure before reduced sunlight triggers a mass extinction event. But he was never supposed to be out here alone, especially not with fragmented memories.
Then he sees the flare of another engine, and he learns that he's not as alone as he thought he was... nor is Earth the only world in danger.

REVIEW: The movie based on this book, starring Ryan Gosling, has been dominating the box office and gets little but positive buzz everywhere I look, but I hear many people who read the book first grumble at what was trimmed. I have not seen the movie yet, but I just finished the book... and I have to say that there's quite a bit that could be cut that might've improved the reading experience, page-eating tangents that made the first half drag so bad I nearly gave up.
From the start, there's a certain "Gary Stu" vibe to Dr. Ryland Grace that, along with Weir's love of long scientific tangents into minutiae that seems to exist largely to show off how much thought he put into the intricacies of his ideas, overshadows the overall story and what should have been a gripping premise. The man can "science" anything better than anyone else, yet nobly prefers teaching children to pursuing academic accolades. When the world needs saving, though, he's plucked from obscurity as one of the earliest members of what will become Project Hail Mary, the desperate plan to save humanity (and a fair chunk of Earth's essential biome) from the effects of a dimming sun. Even here, among the best of the best, he shines as a top star despite insisting he's just an "everyman" scientist... and that was before he found himself literally as Earth's last, best hope.
Between working out his current situation on the spaceship and flashbacks to the origins of his predicament, a metric spitload of theories and experiments and science and tangents await... and when Ryland encounters the intelligent alien "Rocky" (not really a spoiler, given the movie trailers everywhere, and it's not the main twist anyway), he wastes yet more time and page count ensuring that the reader understands just how much consideration Weir put into designing a truly alien alien, not a green-skinned humanoid with a few bumps on their head. Thankfully, Ryland considers Rocky to be essentially another guy (the alien species doesn't actually have male or female sexes), dodging an old pulp cliché, though there's a bit of a "guy's club" undertone to the book that I couldn't quite guarantee was there yet couldn't quite not see, if that makes any sense.
As all this crawls across the page, past the halfway point, I found myself just picking at the book, not devouring it like I recall devouring Weir's The Martian - which also featured a fair bit of science but stayed focused on astronaut Mark Watney's survival predicament more than Project Hail Mary stays focused on that irrelevant little subplot of saving the planet. It's like there was half a story that was padded out with tangents.
Later on, the story (almost despite itself) builds up a decent momentum. Ryland actually makes a few humanizing mistakes. The scientific tangents focus a little more on the problem at hand, for all that I found myself skimming a few paragraphs now and again to get back to the plot itself. It comes down to a fairly solid wrap-up that leaves the door cracked for future developments.
The overall ideas should've earned Project Hail Mary four stars at least. Weir presents some interesting concepts and hypotheticals, and clearly put a decent amount of thought into things beyond "it looks cool" (not that there's anything wrong with that sort of story). One also has to admire a book that celebrates the possibilities of science, especially in an era where too many people (particularly those in power, despite how much of that power only exists because of science and the advancements in civilization that it creates) are actively rallying against it. But the book just could not overcome the slog of the first half when it came time for me to rate it.

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Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman)

Carl's Doomsday Scenario
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 2
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: 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.

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Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)

Dungeon Crawler Carl
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 1
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)

DESCRIPTION: 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.

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...

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The Mercy of Gods (James S. A. Corey)

The Mercy of Gods
The Captive's War series, Book 1
James S. A. Corey
Orbit
Fiction, Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: It was a night of triumph, at least for one small group of elite researchers and students at Dyan Academy on the planet Anjiin... and it was also the beginning of the end of their world. While Tonner and his group celebrate their groundbreaking discovery, reconciling the DNA of native Anjiin life forms with those descended from the long-lost homeworld of the humans, academic politics and rivalries threaten to split the team and the fruits of their labors. But even those matters seem trivial when a peculiar spacial anomaly, only recently detected with another breakthrough project, turns out to be something far less benign than a simple natural phenomenon.
The empire of the Carryx spans countless star systems and encompasses innumerable subjugated species... and those are just the ones that the vaguely insectlike titans find "useful" in their inscrutable minds. Those who are not useful are eliminated with no more thought or remorse than swatting a gnat, and little more effort.
When the Carryx ships descend upon Anjiin, they conquer the planet in under a week. As for the humans, their fate will be decided soon enough. The Carryx take the top talents from around the globe - not just scientists, but politicians, soldiers, artists, and more - back to their home planet, setting each a task at which they must succeed to prove their worth, and the worth of the whole of Anjiin.
As Tonner and the Dyan scholars struggle with the seemingly-impossible job they've been given, Dafyd - always something of an outsider, more a political animal than an academic one - begins to look at his new surroundings in a different way. There must be some uniting philosophy and purpose behind the seemingly random mishmash of alien species he sees around him, something that could unlock the psyche of their Carryx overlords. And if he can figure out what makes their civilization work, he's halfway to figuring out how to tear it all down.

REVIEW: I enjoyed Corey's Expanse series (the books, the TV series, and what little of the extended graphic novel universe I've read), so I was eager to get my hands on their newest sci-fi adventure. While it did deliver a similar grand idea and epic scope, ultimately I didn't connect with the story or the characters in the way I'd hoped to.
The opening sets the stage for the whole book, taking place at a high-end university where top-flight researchers and science students are both celebrating a breakthrough in a complex and esoteric field of study and watching their backs for the knives of rivals. Only Dafyd is an outsider among them, though he's a researcher in his own way, mind geared more toward politics and what drives the people around him (and how they might be manipulated if need be). It's the sort of world I've never had a mind for and never been a part of, and to be honest I wasn't that thrilled about my choice of characters to experience it with. I expect I'd have related a lot more had I been more familiar wit academia, with the sort of obsessive brilliance (and possible mild-to-moderate dysfunction) that drives certain people to extreme bleeding edges of their field and the environment that creates. Around this cast, I could see an intriguing world built by descendants of colonists, one that has adapted in some unusual ways and yet still is alien to this planet that they've called home for generations, long enough that any trace of their extraterrestrial origins (save the knowledge that they were, indeed, from another world) has been lost. It's for this that I kept reading.
Eventually, the invaders make landfall and the story begins to properly take off... after another slow stint during transportation, a stretch where minds are bent to the point of breaking in some cases and where the true nature of their predicament, how utterly helpless and outmatched the humans are against their captors, is driven home. Once on the Carryx homeworld (or a world that's far more home to the aliens than the humans), the tale takes more turns, though it still ultimately centers around science and labwork in a way that kept me at arm's length. Still, there were more "shiny objects" to keep me interested. The many aliens and peculiar, inhuman nature of the world have an old-school sense of wonder (a bit of a throwback vibe, not unlike sci-fi centered on scientists doing science) alongside a certain omnipresent dread. The Carryx and other aliens never feel too human, with their own agendas and psychologies that aren't as one-dimensional as they might seem from the outside, which means that they can never truly be trusted.
Alone of the Dyad scientists, Dafyd works to unravel the secrets of their captors and the other species around him. He hopes that doing so will show him a way out, but it's only when he encounters another enemy of his new keepers - a swarmlike entity sent by another interplanetary species that's fighting the Carryx - that he might finally make some progress... but at a cost he doesn't fully grasp until it's too late to turn back. Meanwhile, the rest of the team slowly become more distinct and interesting, even if they weren't always likable. As they try to complete the task the Carryx set for them, they find themselves beset by innumerable obstacles, from inadequate equipment to meddling outsiders to internal schisms exacerbated by captivity and worsening mental health on all their parts.
The finale wraps up some of the storylines while setting up the greater arc and the next book in the series... a book I'm on the fence about continuing, even knowing that one half of James S. A. Corey (the Daniel Abraham half) tends to write to series arcs and can't therefore necessarily be judged adequately on a single book in a given series. Part of me can't help but be intrigued, though.
There are many things to enjoy and admire in this book. As mentioned, it feels a little like an updated throwback, ideas and science painted on a galactic scale. I did also ultimately appreciate the complicated psyches and drives behind the different characters, human and otherwise. There are also several things that just didn't resonate with me, and even when I appreciated their drives I generally never felt invested in the characters. I think if I were more immersed in academia and the world of university researchers I'd have clicked better with it. As it is, I confess I'm probably just not the real target audience here.

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The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Becky Chambers)

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet
The Wayfarer series, Book 1
Becky Chambers
Harper Voyager
Fiction, Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: Rosemary used to live in the lap of luxury on Mars, but now has given up everything she ever had to get away from her family and old life, joining the crew of the spacecraft Wayfarer as a clerk. It's a patched-up vessel with a crew as mismatched as its parts, from the eccentric tech Kizzy to her partner Jenks, who has fallen in love with the shipboard AI Lovelace, from Dr. Chef - one of the last members of a species slowly going extinct after a genocidal civil war - to Ohan, a Sianat Pair infected with a Whisperer virus that enables great genius at the cost of a shortened lifespan. There's also an Aandrisk pilot, Sissix, and a grouchy human algaeist, Corbin, managing the fuel vats. Rosemary can't help feeling overwhelmed, given that she's barely set foot off a planet before, but Captain Ashby and the crew (well, most of them, save Corbin) go out of their way to make her feel welcome.
When a new species near the galaxy's core - the Toremi, a highly isolationist and clannish species most known for fighting each other to the death over any disagreement - is granted entry into the Galactic Commons of intelligent races, establishing a new wormhole tunnel will be a critical first step to establishing trade and strong diplomatic ties: a lucrative job for any wormhole-punching vessel. Though humans are still considered lesser members of the Commons, Captain Ashby manages to land the gig for the Wayfarer. It'll be a long standard-year of travel to reach the new world, if a short jump back boring a new wormhole through subspace, and long hauls are the kind of trips to make or break a crew, especially when complicated by pirates, bureaucratic barriers, equipment malfunctions, and dark secrets ripped into the open at the worst possible times.

REVIEW: This is another book with personal significance. The novella To Be Taught, If Fortunate was the first audiobook I listened to at my current job - a job I left as of today, transferring to a new role. (There's a long, irrelevant story behind that...) My new job is less likely to allow for the copious audiobook time that I've grown used to, especially not when I'm still learning the ropes. So, to close out my long stretch of listening, I decided to bookend things with this, another Becky Chambers title. It, too, was enjoyable, if a little light on plot.
This is very much a character-driven tale, to the point where there's not too much else binding the events together save the crew's interactions with each other and a few offworlders encountered along the way. For the most part, these are interesting enough to entertain, as everyone has hidden facets and flaws that provide friction now and again, and they all undergo some growth or challenge along the way. Rosemary, a newcomer to the ship in particular and interstellar travel in general, becomes a convenient way for Chambers to explain her milieu to the reader, though Rosemary is far from helpless or useless, just somewhat naïve. And there is a general story arc involved, if a thin one, as the mixed-species crew of the Wayfarer travels to the homeworld of the newest member of the Galactic Commons... but are these Toremi really ready to join the multitude of starfaring races, when only one clan among them has accepted Galactic Commons membership and is still warring with others of its kind? During the Wayfarer's trip, the crew encounter various ways that different species (and members within species; these are not monolithic cultures) view and interact with each other, and even on their own ship there can be stumbles and misunderstandings. Some of the crewmembers seem unevenly developed, though, and don't quite get a full arc or follow-through even after some revelations and transformative moments. Corbin in particular is a flat, grumbling nobody for far too long, and Kizzy's kooky eccentricity wanders erratically between endearing and annoying. Some of their stopovers along the way also overstay their welcome and plot relevance, though this is very much a book where the journey is far more than half the point. The climax feels rushed, shoehorned in to provide drama, with inadequate buildup on a few points (that I can't get into without spoilers). The ending is reasonably satisfying, but also feels like it's partway through some larger journey... and, from what I can tell from blurbs, it looks like the rest of the series wanders away from the Wayfarer (despite the series being named after the ship), so I'm unlikely to find closure on those fronts if I read on.
Still, for all that I sometimes got a little antsy wishing the story would just get on with things already and stop lingering so long over little moments and philosophical discussions and quirky characters being quirky, I will say I remained interested and entertained for the most part as I listened to it, which was enough to keep The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet at a four-star Good rating. On another day, in another mood, I could see where I might be extra-harsh and trim it a half-star, but not today.

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The Illustrated Man (Ray Bradbury)

The Illustrated Man
Ray Bradbury
William Morrow
Fiction, Collection/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: A traveler between towns chances upon a stranger covered in odd tattoos that seem almost alive. The Illustrated Man claims that the images were given to him by an old woman from the far future, and that they are more curse than blessing, for all that they fascinate the traveler. Before bedding down for the evening, the Illustrated Man warns his companion against staring too long - particularly at one blank section in his back. Yet the traveler cannot help himself. In those shifting, dancing lines of ink, he sees eighteen tales unfold: tales of the past, the present, and the future, of invaders from Mars and lost spacemen on Venus, of time traveling refugees and a children's game gone terribly wrong, and more... all inevitably leading toward the revelation in that final, forbidden image.

REVIEW: Ray Bradbury remains one of the true grandmaster wordsmiths, not just in science fiction but general storytelling. This classic collection holds up fairly well for the most part, painting vivid pictures in the mind's eye. He even foresaw the dangers of letting technology raise the next generation in "The Veldt", the tale of a family living in a "smart home" with a mechanical intelligence that does everything, even create and think, for the children. Still, several of his stories can't help but show their age in certain ideas of the future, particularly cultural assumptions about women's roles (or lack thereof) and a reliance on Christian imagery (particularly in "The Man", where an ambitious captain and his crew, out to exploit new planets, arrive at one rustic backwater to discover that another offworlder has just been and left after performing a series of miracles for the natives - a man who is never named but is clearly intended to be Jesus). One sad relic of his time was his idea that the book burners and censors would come from the halls of pure science and reason, striving to drive out "obsolete" imagination and superstition (and with it the creativity and wonder that truly makes humanity human); in our time, we can see that it's superstition that's determined to drive out science and reason as well as imagination. Bradbury's tendency toward downer endings, either slow-motion tragedies or dark final twists of fate, can also be a bit much after several such stories in a row. (My late father referred to Bradbury's works as "anti-science fiction" as he saw the genre as being more about the promise of science and the future, not the dark sides and the inevitable endings of great things, which Bradbury so often explored.) As for the Illustrated Man himself, whose stories bookend the collection, he remains an iconic figure in that gray area between sci-fi, magic realism, and horror. The stories are still worth reading, and still have plenty to say.

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The Wrong Stars (Tim Pratt)

The Wrong Stars
The Axiom series, Book 1
Tim Pratt
Angry Robot
Fiction, Adventure/Sci-Fi
**+ (Bad/Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Five hundred years ago, a dying Earth sent out fleets of "goldilocks" ships: vessels with cryogenically-preserved crews, embryos, and other building blocks of colonization, flung into the stars and aimed at planets that might possibly be hospitable to human life. But then people got themselves together (more or less), the planet slowly recovering as humanity spread through the solar system... and then the Liars showed up. Vaguely cephalopodlike aliens who come in multiple body types, no two groups tell the same stories of their origins, their purpose, or even what the rest of the galaxy is like, hence humanity's popular name for them. But they are keen traders of technology, and now humans have access to "bridges" that allow passage to various systems in nearly the blink of an eye. As for the goldilocks ships, a handful succeeded, more reached their destination after centuries to find that bridge-assisted people had beat them to colonization, and many were presumed lost to the void... until now.
Callie and the crew of the White Raven thought they'd stumbled across another easy salvage when they found the derelict ship drifting near Neptune, though one whose profile they don't recognize. Beneath all the strange fins and appendages welded to the surface, they're astonished to find an ancient relic: a goldilocks ship. It must've malfunctioned and never gotten clear of the solar system, but something doesn't add up. Who - or what - made the bizarre modifications, which are both inside and outside the hull? And, with only one crewmember in cryogenic suspension, what happened to everyone else?
Elaine Oh was a xenobiologist who never expected to see her home star system again. Then she's woken by a stranger who informs her that five centuries have passed, and not only did her ship not reach the distant planet it was aiming for, it apparently never left home, relatively speaking. But... no, that's not right. Her memory is a bit scrambled from the sleep pod, but she remembers going somewhere - and something terrible happened, something she has to warn people about, if only she could remember.
When the White Raven's half-cyborg engineer Ashok discovers a strange box in the engine bay, none of them suspect the magnitude of what they've discovered... or how the fallout could destroy humanity.

REVIEW: I knew, going into this one, that it was composed of many familiar space opera/adventure parts. The ragtag salvage crew, the aliens with unknown motivations, the "magic box"/MacGuffin technology that endangers anyone who possesses it... nothing particularly innovative here. But familiar doesn't necessarily mean bad. Even the stalest genre chestnuts can be made tasty with the right seasoning and presentation. Unfortunately, The Wrong Stars never became more than the sum of its generic parts... and sometimes, sadly, felt less than that sum.
Things start with plenty of promise, as Callie and her peculiar crew discover the goldilocks ship, Elaine, and the mystery, all pretty much out of the gate... tweaked when, briefly revived from slumber, Elaine's first words are a warning about alien contact. But aliens are old news in modern-day deep space; the Liars are common faces around the solar system, though of course they arrived after the goldilocks ships left Earth. Of course, the reader can infer that there's more than that... and the crew really should, too, when Ashok discovers the strange black box that defies every scan he throws at it, and when the mere sight of it sends every Liar in the vicinity fleeing as fast as their multiple tentacle legs can carry them. The crew's persistent refusal to ignore the evidence of their eyes is an early warning sign, unfortunately. There are soon numerous others. For a starfaring future that has reached other systems generations ago, the future Pratt presents just doesn't feel... futuristic, or big, or exciting, or anything I generally feel when reading a solid space adventure. Elaine barely has any trouble adapting to a society that's advanced five centuries in her absence, excepting brief moments of disorientation meeting a few more exotic members of the crew (whose exotic nature, with the exception of Ashok's cybernetic enhancements, as often as not end up just being cosmetic, and not really impacting the plot) and people on the Neptunian space station she visits. One would think that encountering aliens and having whole new colony worlds opened up would have some sort of notable impact, something to really throw a relic from the past off her game, but no. She's almost immediately more concerned with whether or not her physical attraction to Callie is reciprocated; they're both women, but I couldn't help sensing a bit of "male gaze" behind their interactions (no prize for guessing whether the feelings are, in fact, mutual).
Beyond those issues, the story itself started feeling stale pretty early, as characters increasingly skewed toward less intelligent actions and conversations, repeating things and drawing out revelations. By the end, everyone had pretty much entered "too stupid to live" territory. I can't get into details for spoiler reasons, but I can rarely pinpoint a particular scene and interaction that dropped a book's rating below three stars like I could in this story, and it did involve characters being impossibly, ridiculously obtuse, even when the baddie was laying out their evil plans, using all the standard Evil Plan (TM) jargon, literally kicking another character like kicking a puppy... and still, still, they had to be outright told (again and again) before they believed that this person was, in fact, not particularly good maybe. (There were other elements involved, too, relating to alien tech and artifacts and what seemed to be glaring plot and logic holes, but, again, spoiler potential.) And then the wrap up just empties a box of leftover space adventure clichés on the table as if to get them over with before setting up a sequel.
It's frustrating more than anything. This could've been an enjoyable adventure, even with the familiarity. But by the end I just felt like I'd wasted my time with a crew I didn't care for in a galaxy that felt too small.

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Pet (Awaeke Emezi)

Pet
Awaeke Emezi
Make Me a World
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
*** (Okay)

DESCRIPTION: Once upon a time, the world was full of monsters: not goblins or demons or storybook beasts, but the kind who walk on two legs. They could be anywhere, and look like anything, and they spread their greed and hate and evil far and wide, until the people finally had enough. It took decades, and many things were done which are no longer spoken of, but at last the revolution succeeded. They dismantled the prisons and abolished the firearms that turned public places into potential massacre zones. They turned to proactive intervention rather than reactive punishment, embracing difference and diversity over bigotry and hatred. And the angels, the heroes of that era, still watch over the better world they created in the town of Lucille, one in which the public can at last breathe a sigh of relief, because the monsters are all gone.
At least, that's what the children are taught in school, and what their parents tell them.
Jam did not mean to bleed on her mother's latest unfinished painting. She just wanted to look at it, to ponder the strange, beastly figure of smoke and feathers and horns that had emerged on the canvas. When she accidentally cuts herself, a few drops of her blood somehow wake the creature, or rather open a portal to some strange other place through which it can step into her world. It tells her she can call it Pet, and declares that it is a hunter of monsters, summoned to this world because it is needed.
Surely it must be mistaken; Mom and Dad and all her teachers tell her that the monsters are gone and never coming back to Lucille. But it is quite insistent, and Jam begins to wonder. Would she even know what a monster looked like if she saw one? And could it be possible that one has been hiding in plain sight right in front of her and she just didn't know how to see?

REVIEW: Any book that opens with a prologue explaining its themes to the reader before they can have a chance to read and discover them for themselves is waving a red flag warning that the coming story is not going to tell me a tale but sell me a message. But I'd already given up on another audiobook for my workday and had a very specific window of time to fill, and this looked intriguing. Thus, I waded in.
The early parts have a lot of promise. It takes place in an unspecified place and time, either near future or alternate timeline, where the promise of progressive revolution has borne fruit. All the "monsters" who have warped society for too long, from the child predators to the overpowered monsters who have seized the reins of power at the highest echelons to strangle justice and turn a profit off poisoning the land and murdering countless people, have been cast down, the militarization of police and packing of prisons has ended, and even religious extremism has been nipped, with religion itself only vaguely discussed in school (though the public libraries are well stocked and well staffed and will offer anything to anyone who wishes to learn). Jam is transgender, her parents are different races, and her best friend/potential boyfriend Redemption's extended family includes a parental throuple. This is a future that's as close to an accepting, peaceful utopia as possible, though of course it's not perfect... and, as the book shows, it threatens to become a victim of its own success. Though Jam's and Redemption's parents, and of course the elder "angels" who fought for this society, remember the time before and the many guises of the monsters they overthrew, children no longer understand just how easy it is for terrible people to hide in plain sight. They don't know the warning signs, and when anyone does dare suggest that perhaps there are still dangers in the world, their elders refuse to acknowledge that monsters could ever return; after all, they sacrificed so much and did "hard things" to end the terrors, and they refuse to admit that this is not a battle that can be decisively won and forgotten about. When Jam accidentally wakes the being "Pet" (which may or may not be an angel), she, too, does not want to believe - especially when it tells her that the monster it is here to hunt is in Redemption's home. Her own parents deny the possibility so vehemently that Jam convinces herself that Pet is mistaken, or even lying. Yet Pet insists, while she grows conflicted, then denies any chance of trouble, only Pet insists....
You may sense a bit of repetition in the previous bits. While the early parts of the tale have a certain literary, surreal element - the peculiar being emerging from the painting with its slightly archaic and poetic speech, the way her parents react to its arrival, even the way neurodivergent and selectively mute Jam interacts with the world as much through energy and vibration as verbal or signed communication - it starts getting a little heavy-handed with its themes, and soon sinks into a holding pattern that keeps things stuck for far too long, where Pet insists that it needs to hunt and Jam needs to help it figure out where the monster is, while Jam refuses to take the threat seriously and doesn't really believe monsters are real anymore, only for Pet to once again repeat itself with some variant of "the hunt is the hunt" and "see the unseen" or some other entirely useless phrase or sentiment that fails to convince Jam to step up to a plate that needs to be stepped up to if the story's going to move forward, yet which she dithers about for far, far too long... and even when she does, the tale bogs down more with too much filler and not enough progress. At some point, it stopped being intriguing and started being tiresomely preachy and repetitious, before (slowly) building up to a (slow) confrontation and (slow) resolution, underlain with a religious subtext that felt a little out of place. By the end, my skull was fairly ringing from the sledgehammer blows driving its message home, plus few things irk me more than a sermon mislabeled as a story.

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Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)

Brave New World
Aldous Huxley
Blackstone Publishing
Fiction, Literary Fiction/Sci-Fi
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: In the centuries since the Nine Years War ended the old, chaotic, wasteful ways, the world has thrived under a new World Order: inspired by the visionary Henry Ford, every aspect of human life, from conception to death, is carefully controlled and curated like parts on an assembly line. No longer must people strive or suffer or trouble themselves to think or worry; now, everyone knows their exact place and role, from the barely-human Epsilon menial workers to the Alpha scientists and controllers of civilization. Archaic concepts like "love" and "family" and "faith" have been relegated to the past, and the past relegated to oblivion, while any frustration or discomfort is easily dealt with via the omnipresent drug soma. Only in isolated islands and fenced off Savage Reservations do any humans follow the ancient ways, with their disorganized filth and outdated morals, rightly feared and derided by any enlightened mind. But even in paradise, there are those who are unhappy, even if they can't always identify how or why, let alone what to do about it. When the malcontent Bernard and his female companion Lenina visit a Reservation, they encounter John, a unique child of two worlds... an encounter that cannot lead anywhere but tragedy.

REVIEW: First published in 1932, Aldous Huxley's classic depiction of a society entirely subsumed by shallow consumerism and stripped of all pursuit of truth and meaning still resonates today, though some parts inevitably show their age. In Huxley's future, Henry Ford's assembly line, the way it reduced workers from skilled craftsmen to mere interchangeable cogs in a larger machine, was the first step on the road to a dystopian world government (which looks like a utopia from within), to the point where, when religion itself was erased along with other traces of the "irrelevant" past, "Fordism" filled the void... for the masses, at least. The controllers still have access to forbidden materials and ideas, the better to fine-tune the ongoing manipulation and infantilization of the masses; even the Alphas are subject to propaganda and subliminal messaging proscribing their thoughts and habits, while anyone at any level who shows signs of rejecting their programming is either shipped off to remote islands where they can't infect others with the sin of individualism or executed (though of course it's phrased more politely, for all that citizens are desensitized to death from an early age).
This is a world and story populated pretty much exclusively with emotionally stunted, immature people, the inevitable end results of a system so vast and monstrous that they don't even recognize how they've been psychologically and intellectually mutilated; as a result, the characters aren't exactly pleasant to spend time around, even as they all seem to recognize on some level that something isn't quite right with themselves or with society at large. Bernard, whose oddities many attribute to some unfortunately incident in his gestation (all done artificially; the concept of natural conception and birth, like some animal, is utterly repugnant, and the word "mother" is perhaps the greatest, foulest profanity one can utter), feels discontented and drawn to risks and isolation. Lenina flirts with the dangerous idea of only having one partner; in a society where people are expected to freely sleep around, forming any manner of exclusive emotional attachment is considered a perversion. Bernard's sometimes-friend Helmholtz, a slogan writer for propaganda and government programming, wrestles with strange yearnings that he literally has no words for, those ideas - like all art and poetry and anything that speaks to deeper, truer human experiences - having been excised from their lives and vocabularies. But the most tragically mutilated person of all is the young man John. His mother was a Beta who got lost on a vacation to the Savage Reservation while scandalously (and unknowingly) carrying the child of her Alpha partner; the boy is born among the "Savages", but - raised by a disliked mother who yearns constantly for the comforts of soma and the World Order and has no clue how to bring up a child, rejected by the locals for being an outsider (and because of the trouble his mother causes) - does not belong among them, for all that he's absorbed their habits and spirituality alongside the stories his mother told of the "heaven" beyond the Reservation. For selfish reasons (nobody in the World Order ever acts for anything but selfish reasons), Bernard arranges to return John and his mother to London... but even before departure, the writing is on the wall. John understands pain and longing and sorrow and all other manner of forbidden notions, learning to read via a tattered copy of Shakespeare found on the Reservation (Huxley quotes rather extensively from Shakespeare), his ideas of love twisted by a mother who, as a World Order citizen, has no concept of the term and didn't grasp what her son needed from her. It goes without saying that things do not go well when he gets to London and finally sees the truth with his own eyes.
This being more of a conceptual fable than anything else, it tends to wander and meander, bogging down in details of the false utopia of the World Order and, later, in the ways of the "Savages" on the Reservation; there are some iffy racial and cultural things going on here, and the less said about women's roles and character depictions in either culture, the better, though again the whole book is best considered in the light of allegory, not straight-up fiction. Here is where the tale shows its age the most, though it also is telling that, at the time it was written, the idea that those in power would seek not to simply rewrite and literally reshape humans to serve them but potentially eliminate most of them as unnecessary (automation and "artificial intelligence" doing all the tasks for anyone under Beta, or even under Alpha, by Huxley's World Order standards) did not occur, or was not considered a likely enough avenue to explore. Eventually, all the bogging down stops the story dead in its tracks as John confronts the Controller for Western Europe, allowing Huxley to basically talk directly to his audience about the problems the World Order thought it was solving (at least at first; if there ever were good intentions behind the rise of the Fordian concepts in the wake of the devastating Nine Years War, those were long ago subsumed by the bottomless pit of power-lust and sheer greed and the machinery eating its own tail as programmed and psychologically proscribed Alphas took over leadership roles and the perpetuation of the Order) and the rebuttals pointing out the unacceptably high cost for the stability such a system promises, the stripping away of all basic human drives and needs and all things that make life truly worth living in service to shallow wants and childish whims - wants and whims that aren't even one's own, but programmed into society at every level by higher powers. The final parts just draw out the inevitable ending; I don't deal in spoilers, but this is a classic cautionary tale, so don't expect sunshine and rainbows. In any event, this is another classic that I've meant to get to for some time. I'm glad I finally read it, but I don't expect to revisit it any time soon, especially not while I'm living in a futuristic dystopia myself.

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