(Delayed) July Update

Another delayed update, but the two books I managed to finish in July have been archived over on the main Brightdreamer Books site. Rather a pathetic number, but at least the books were good, even if life distinctly is not.

Enjoy!

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).

You Might Also Enjoy:

Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - My Review
The Daughters' War (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
The Butcher's Masquerade (Matt Dinniman) - My review

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.

You Might Also Enjoy:

Drawing and Painting Fantasy Worlds (Finlay Cowan) - My Review
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (James Gurney) - My Review
Castle (David Macaulay) - My Review

(Delayed) June Site Update

Another day-late/dollar-shot update marks the halfway point in a year that has yet to demonstrate a redeeming quality that isn't qualified and asterisked and otherwise simply "not quite as bad as the absolute worst case scenario just yet." Anyway, June's five reviews have been archived and cross-linked at the main Brightdreamer Books site, as usual.

Enjoy!

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.

You Might Also Enjoy:

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (Suzanne Collins) - My Review
The Gate of the Feral Gods (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Zero Stars, Do Not Recommend (MJ Wassmer) - My Review