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...
You Might Also Enjoy:
Off to Be the Wizard (Scott Meyer) - My Review
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Dennis E. Taylor) - My Review
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Thursday, February 5, 2026
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Vital Abyss (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Lagoon (Nnedi Okorafor) - My Review
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Vital Abyss (James S. A. Corey) - My Review
Lagoon (Nnedi Okorafor) - My Review
Children of Time (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Saturday, January 31, 2026
January Site Update
Is it too late to return the unused portion of 2026 for a refund? The main Brightdreamer Books page has been updated with the month's reviews, including the last audiobooks I'll likely be able to get to for some time. (As for the new job... I'm hoping it just got off on the wrong foot and it'll get better, though I made sure to update my resume in case it doesn't.)
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, January 23, 2026
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Killing Gravity (Corey J. White) - My Review
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
To Be Taught, If Fortunate (Becky Chambers) - My Review
Shards of Earth (Adrian Tchaikovsky) - My Review
Killing Gravity (Corey J. White) - My Review
Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Greenteeth (Molly O'Neill)
Greenteeth
Molly O'Neill
Orbit
Fiction, Fantasy
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: For one thousand years, Jenny Greenteeth has lived in the lake besides the little town of Chipping Appleby, tending the water plants and tidying the lake bed and only eating the occasional interloper. When a witch is thrown into her waters, bound with burning iron, Jenny thinks perhaps she's expected to end the mortal's life quickly... but this woman seems to have true power, and Jenny does not at all like the looks of the priestly figure who tossed the witch to her doom. She rescues Temperance and brings her to her cave beneath the waters. There, the witch tells Jenny of the wicked parson who seems to have bewitched her neighbors, convincing them to turn on her when once they were friendly. Together, Jenny and the witch hatch a plan to strike back... but find something far, far more dangerous than either anticipated within the skin of the holy man, something that could doom the whole country if left unchecked. In desperation, they seek help from Gwyn ap Nuud, king of the high fae and one-time leader of the Wild Hunt, and are charged with three seemingly impossible tasks as the price for his assistance - but if they fail, both mortals and immortals will suffer under the heel of the monstrous Erl King.
REVIEW: "Cozy" fantasy seems to be having a moment these days, and Greenteeth might roughly fall into that category as it focuses on the budding friendship between a not-quite-monstrous monster and a good witch, though in other ways it hearkens back to more traditional fantasies built around quests and elder-day magic that's fading away in an increasingly modern and human-dominated world.
The titular Jenny is a water monster, a green womanlike figure possessing great strength, nigh-immortality, the ability to breathe underwater, and multiple rows of very sharp teeth. "Jenny Greenteeth" is a traditional folklore creature of the British Isles, kin to pixies and hobgoblins, and this particular Jenny has been one so long that she no longer recalls if she had another identity or name. If she even thinks about her past at all, she assumes she was created in the same way that she herself once created a daughter from a drowned human infant. She's a solitary being, keeping her "household" beneath the lake nice and tidy with a pike as a sort-of pet, and she generally doesn't bother the nearby humans, who seem to have forgotten that they even have a lake beast... at least, so it seems, until they rudely drop a witch into her domain. Some twinge of compassion causes her to spare the woman's life, as much as a dislike of the parson who riled up the locals into a froth of anti-witch sentiment. But Jenny is not, and should never be mistaken for, human. She may have empathy and even be capable of kindness, but when need be, or when pushed, she's quite capable of putting her claws and teeth to bloody use; the traditional Jenny Greenteeth isn't known for her vegan diet, after all. Temperance the witch is initially, naturally, terrified, but her despair and anger, plus her determination to get back to her beloved husband and children and get them out of the parson's foul clutches, lead her into what starts as an uneasy truce with Jenny. When Temperance needs special ingredients for a spell as part of her attempted counterstrike against the wicked parson, Jenny calls upon Brackus, a traveling goblin merchant with a trickster streak and a bottomless bag of various goodies. It isn't long before Brackus is drawn deeper into the problem, when it becomes clear that there's a greater supernatural threat embodied in the parson that endangers the magical realm as well as the mundane - and the magical realm is already in trouble, slowly fading as the world ages. Indeed, the faerie king no longer even rides forth as he used to, content to preside over a diminishing court that was once the feared Wild Hunt; even the promise of a quarry like the legendary Erl King is insufficient to stir him from his retirement. Instead, he sets three seemingly-impossible quests out of legend before the trio seeking his aid, and even if they succeed, all he promises is advice, not active help. Still, it's better than nothing, which is what they have when facing the enemy in Chipping Appleby.
As Jenny, Temperance, and Brackus, along with some help from the faerie-touched hound Cavall (on loan from the faerie queen, Lady Creiddylad, who offers more tangible help than the king but is still constrained by his rules), set forth to fulfill the lord's requests, they travel the length and breadth of an elder England, seeing for themselves how magic and the memory of magic has faded in the centuries since Camelot stood. The three clash more than once, but adversity inevitably begets friendship, and Jenny even comes to appreciate Brackus despite his sometimes-irritating optimism.
There are a few points where the personal clashes feel a bit drawn out, as when Jenny and Temperance settle into a feud spurred by a petty misunderstanding that festers out of proportion; this primarily happens to force a plot-relevant event, and struck me as mildly manipulative on the author's part. The ties to Camelot and Arthur become more pronounced as the tale unfolds; it works for the most part, though I sometimes get tired of King Arthur as the inevitable go-to touchstone legend. For the most part, though, it's a fairly satisfying tale, evoking the spirit of questing fairy tales, even though the wrap-up feels slightly too neat and tidy. Being a standalone title helps, as it doesn't ever overstay its welcome or its premise.
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