The month's reviews - all three of them - have been archived and updated on the main Brightdreamer Books site.
Enjoy!
(Incidentally, I may try changing my blog review template in the coming month, just in case things look weird if/when I next post a review. I really should be using headings and such, so I'm going to try that. There's no way I can retrofit old reviews at this point, though.)
Sunday, May 31, 2026
Saturday, May 30, 2026
Chronicles of Whetherwhy: The Age of Enchantment (Anna James)
Chronicles of Whetherwhy: The Age of Enchantment
The Chronicles of Whetherwhy series, Book 1
Anna James
Flamingo Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: On the island of Whetherwhy, everyone has a little magic, each influenced by the four seasons, from the creation of spring through the learning and revelation of summer, transitions and transformations of fall, and destruction and endings of winter. But only a few are enchanters, with power rooted in all four seasons. Enchanters can weave powerful spells from the threads of Whetherwhy's magic, even creating lifelike "Tangle" creatures of pure magic, and must learn to control their gifts properly lest things go terribly awry. Some even rise as far as the queen's personal retinue! That is why, at age thirteen, all children are tested to reveal their particular season of magic, and enchanters are whisked off to Thistledown Academy in the capital of Stormgrove.
Juniper Quinn wants none of that. She loves reading about adventures in books, but doesn't think she has it in her to do great things... so only her twin brother, Rafferty, knows that she has enchanter magic. She'd much rather stay in their small town of Honeyvale with their bookbinder family than go off to a big city like Stormgrove, away from everyone she knows and loves - and besides, everyone seems to think enchanters are arrogant snobs looking down on the rest of Whetherwhy. But there's no tricking the testers, so - like it or not - she's soon on her way to Thistledown. Here, she learns it's not so bad being an enchanter. She might even get to enjoy it... but from the start there are secrets and dangers afoot, starting with an attack on the way to the academy itself that robs her of her magic.
Rafferty, meanwhile, has never lived apart from his sister. But when she's taken away, he realizes that he wants to see the wider world himself, and what better place to start than Stormgrove? He applies to various printers and gets accepted as an apprentice in a bindery not far from Thistledown. What a great way to start an adventurous life, and how surprised Juniper will be to find her twin brother right next door in the big city! But being away from his family for the first time exposes him to a different Whetherwhy than he knew, a place where enchanters are distrusted, inequality is rampant, and secret societies seek to level the playing field. Soon, he begins to wonder which side he's on - and if he can still trust his own twin sister, now that she's a Thistledown student on the other side of the academy walls.
REVIEW: I mostly got this because the second book in the series intrigued me; I liked the concept of the "Tangles", magical constructs with lives of their own (with their dark counterpart "Knots"), and it looked light and whimsical. But at some point it simply did not deliver on its best promises, staying in the shallow end of a concept that kept teasing at deeper and more interesting waters.
It starts out as just what it promised on the cover, a fun and somewhat whimsical fantasy adventure, and if it isn't exactly original, it has that worn-in-shoes comfortable familiarity of tropes done decently. Juniper and Rafferty Quinn are decent enough characters for the story and world they inhabit, twins who share everything except their magic; while Rafferty is a strong spring mage, using his creative gifts to embroider beautiful designs for the family's bookbinder business, Juniper struggles to hide the enchantment powers that she knows will separate her from her loved ones and thrust her into a life she doesn't feel ready to live. It doesn't help that their own father makes a comment about enchanters being stuck-up snobs (before he knows about her gifts), and others in Honeyvale agree with him. But when her powers are revealed, everyone comes together in support and doesn't say a bad word about enchanter magic again, so that little plot point fizzles out... the first of many hints at greater conflicts and prejudices that gets lip service but little to no actual page presence or follow-through. The reader is told more than once that enchanters are an elite class of people, viewed as considering themselves better than the average Whetherwhy citizen with their smaller magics... but we barely ever see people in Whetherwhy actively using their magic anyway, and we never see enchanters actually treating people bad (or people being treated poorly as a direct result of enchanters existing). The classism that exists is a little clunky and is the sort that seems like it would exist even without magic at all, tied to wealth more than magic itself, enchanters being so rare that you just don't get whole families of them; Juniper has two classmates from wealthy families, neither of whom built their wealth solely on enchanters, one of them being a spoiled snob and the other embracing Thistledown's efforts to teach students to do most everything without magic or even servants, including gardening and mending and cleaning. How are students from this system coming out as the uppity snobs that everyone complains about (save the few who started out that way)... or why is everyone so jealous of powers we only really see used in moments of danger? There's talk of increasing numbers of "Knots" (malevolent free-roaming magical constructs that are the result of misfired spells or other magical accidents), but they seem too rare and random to really account for the resentment that drives so much of one half of the plot.
Anyway, while Juniper is dealing with the academy and the theft of her magic, Rafferty sets out on his own big adventure, and soon finds himself pulled into a dark conspiracy of anti-enchanter agitators. At first, they seem not so bad: surely they're just studying magic and enchantment on their own, and if there really is a way to share powers so those with less get a little more, is that so terrible? Maybe he can be close to his sister again... but he also starts to listen to the wrong voices and takes her prolonged silence in response to his letters the wrong way, thinking she's becoming elitist like everyone seems to think all enchanters become as they develop their magic. He has a fellow apprentice, Jessy, and both are pulled into the secret Papercut Society via an exceptional plot convenience that only crops up once Rafferty is in town... which is odd, as Jessy has been an orphan for much longer than he's been there and the coincidence that drags them in involves the deaths of her parents. It's like she was sitting there twiddling her thumbs waiting for a main character to show up and kickstart her adventure. In fact, too much of the plot starts to feel like people and events were sitting around waiting for the Quinn twins to come along in order to start moving. I understand there's going to be some level of plot convenience in many stories, but it started feeling like a bit of a stretch, even for a title aimed at younger readers.
The ending leaves a few questions dangling for future volumes, but by then I was no longer interested; it was all too shallow and glossy and neat, a smothering hug of an overprotective storyteller bound and determined not to let anything too perilous reach little ears. There's even a dragon for quite literally no reason that needed a dragon. I am an absolute sucker for dragons, but when even I just shrugged my shoulders after its brief appearance - after the characters made a point of being amazed that one even existed when they've been gone so long that even Whetherwhy, the isle of magic, considers them mere myths, only for everyone to dismiss it the moment it was out of sight, no attempt to follow up with the person who apparently captured or smuggled it into the city, no questions, no lingering hint of it as an ongoing threat, no nothing, like young toddlers whose concept of object permanence is not yet fully formed - that's a waste of a dragon.
By the end, I found the story just plain lacked the sparkle and punch to even keep it at a four-star Good rating. Characters never really surprise or change much, plot points are telegraphed with the subtlety of a jackhammer, and it wraps up too neatly (yet not neatly at all given all the unacknowledged issues and questions that should be dealt with but aren't). There's real potential and some nice descriptions of the magic and world, but James just bubble-wrapped it too much, shying away from any of the truly dark and interesting bits that would've kept me satisfied and reading onward.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wizards of Once (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Sparkers (Eleanor Glewwe) - My Review
A Darkening of Dragons (S. A. Patrick) - My Review
The Chronicles of Whetherwhy series, Book 1
Anna James
Flamingo Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)
DESCRIPTION: On the island of Whetherwhy, everyone has a little magic, each influenced by the four seasons, from the creation of spring through the learning and revelation of summer, transitions and transformations of fall, and destruction and endings of winter. But only a few are enchanters, with power rooted in all four seasons. Enchanters can weave powerful spells from the threads of Whetherwhy's magic, even creating lifelike "Tangle" creatures of pure magic, and must learn to control their gifts properly lest things go terribly awry. Some even rise as far as the queen's personal retinue! That is why, at age thirteen, all children are tested to reveal their particular season of magic, and enchanters are whisked off to Thistledown Academy in the capital of Stormgrove.
Juniper Quinn wants none of that. She loves reading about adventures in books, but doesn't think she has it in her to do great things... so only her twin brother, Rafferty, knows that she has enchanter magic. She'd much rather stay in their small town of Honeyvale with their bookbinder family than go off to a big city like Stormgrove, away from everyone she knows and loves - and besides, everyone seems to think enchanters are arrogant snobs looking down on the rest of Whetherwhy. But there's no tricking the testers, so - like it or not - she's soon on her way to Thistledown. Here, she learns it's not so bad being an enchanter. She might even get to enjoy it... but from the start there are secrets and dangers afoot, starting with an attack on the way to the academy itself that robs her of her magic.
Rafferty, meanwhile, has never lived apart from his sister. But when she's taken away, he realizes that he wants to see the wider world himself, and what better place to start than Stormgrove? He applies to various printers and gets accepted as an apprentice in a bindery not far from Thistledown. What a great way to start an adventurous life, and how surprised Juniper will be to find her twin brother right next door in the big city! But being away from his family for the first time exposes him to a different Whetherwhy than he knew, a place where enchanters are distrusted, inequality is rampant, and secret societies seek to level the playing field. Soon, he begins to wonder which side he's on - and if he can still trust his own twin sister, now that she's a Thistledown student on the other side of the academy walls.
REVIEW: I mostly got this because the second book in the series intrigued me; I liked the concept of the "Tangles", magical constructs with lives of their own (with their dark counterpart "Knots"), and it looked light and whimsical. But at some point it simply did not deliver on its best promises, staying in the shallow end of a concept that kept teasing at deeper and more interesting waters.
It starts out as just what it promised on the cover, a fun and somewhat whimsical fantasy adventure, and if it isn't exactly original, it has that worn-in-shoes comfortable familiarity of tropes done decently. Juniper and Rafferty Quinn are decent enough characters for the story and world they inhabit, twins who share everything except their magic; while Rafferty is a strong spring mage, using his creative gifts to embroider beautiful designs for the family's bookbinder business, Juniper struggles to hide the enchantment powers that she knows will separate her from her loved ones and thrust her into a life she doesn't feel ready to live. It doesn't help that their own father makes a comment about enchanters being stuck-up snobs (before he knows about her gifts), and others in Honeyvale agree with him. But when her powers are revealed, everyone comes together in support and doesn't say a bad word about enchanter magic again, so that little plot point fizzles out... the first of many hints at greater conflicts and prejudices that gets lip service but little to no actual page presence or follow-through. The reader is told more than once that enchanters are an elite class of people, viewed as considering themselves better than the average Whetherwhy citizen with their smaller magics... but we barely ever see people in Whetherwhy actively using their magic anyway, and we never see enchanters actually treating people bad (or people being treated poorly as a direct result of enchanters existing). The classism that exists is a little clunky and is the sort that seems like it would exist even without magic at all, tied to wealth more than magic itself, enchanters being so rare that you just don't get whole families of them; Juniper has two classmates from wealthy families, neither of whom built their wealth solely on enchanters, one of them being a spoiled snob and the other embracing Thistledown's efforts to teach students to do most everything without magic or even servants, including gardening and mending and cleaning. How are students from this system coming out as the uppity snobs that everyone complains about (save the few who started out that way)... or why is everyone so jealous of powers we only really see used in moments of danger? There's talk of increasing numbers of "Knots" (malevolent free-roaming magical constructs that are the result of misfired spells or other magical accidents), but they seem too rare and random to really account for the resentment that drives so much of one half of the plot.
Anyway, while Juniper is dealing with the academy and the theft of her magic, Rafferty sets out on his own big adventure, and soon finds himself pulled into a dark conspiracy of anti-enchanter agitators. At first, they seem not so bad: surely they're just studying magic and enchantment on their own, and if there really is a way to share powers so those with less get a little more, is that so terrible? Maybe he can be close to his sister again... but he also starts to listen to the wrong voices and takes her prolonged silence in response to his letters the wrong way, thinking she's becoming elitist like everyone seems to think all enchanters become as they develop their magic. He has a fellow apprentice, Jessy, and both are pulled into the secret Papercut Society via an exceptional plot convenience that only crops up once Rafferty is in town... which is odd, as Jessy has been an orphan for much longer than he's been there and the coincidence that drags them in involves the deaths of her parents. It's like she was sitting there twiddling her thumbs waiting for a main character to show up and kickstart her adventure. In fact, too much of the plot starts to feel like people and events were sitting around waiting for the Quinn twins to come along in order to start moving. I understand there's going to be some level of plot convenience in many stories, but it started feeling like a bit of a stretch, even for a title aimed at younger readers.
The ending leaves a few questions dangling for future volumes, but by then I was no longer interested; it was all too shallow and glossy and neat, a smothering hug of an overprotective storyteller bound and determined not to let anything too perilous reach little ears. There's even a dragon for quite literally no reason that needed a dragon. I am an absolute sucker for dragons, but when even I just shrugged my shoulders after its brief appearance - after the characters made a point of being amazed that one even existed when they've been gone so long that even Whetherwhy, the isle of magic, considers them mere myths, only for everyone to dismiss it the moment it was out of sight, no attempt to follow up with the person who apparently captured or smuggled it into the city, no questions, no lingering hint of it as an ongoing threat, no nothing, like young toddlers whose concept of object permanence is not yet fully formed - that's a waste of a dragon.
By the end, I found the story just plain lacked the sparkle and punch to even keep it at a four-star Good rating. Characters never really surprise or change much, plot points are telegraphed with the subtlety of a jackhammer, and it wraps up too neatly (yet not neatly at all given all the unacknowledged issues and questions that should be dealt with but aren't). There's real potential and some nice descriptions of the magic and world, but James just bubble-wrapped it too much, shying away from any of the truly dark and interesting bits that would've kept me satisfied and reading onward.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Wizards of Once (Cressida Cowell) - My Review
Sparkers (Eleanor Glewwe) - My Review
A Darkening of Dragons (S. A. Patrick) - My Review
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Die Volume 1 (Kieron Gillen) - My Review
Dark Lord of Derkholm (Diana Wynne Jones) - My Review
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Die Volume 1 (Kieron Gillen) - My Review
Dark Lord of Derkholm (Diana Wynne Jones) - My Review
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
The True Meaning of Smekday (Adam Rex) - My Review
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
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.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
The True Meaning of Smekday (Adam Rex) - My Review
Space Opera (Catherynne M. Valente) - My Review
Thursday, April 30, 2026
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