Carl's Doomsday Scenario
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 2
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)
DESCRIPTION: Coast Guard veteran Carl and his cat companion, Princess Donut, along with Donut's new dinosaur pet Mongo, have made it to the third level of the dungeon in the "game" that will determine humanity's fate on the planet they used to call home. They, and the diminishing number of other "crawlers", now have to decide which race they'll transform into (if they don't opt to remain human) and pick a class, decisions that may directly affect their odds of survival. But Carl and Donut both know by now that many of the choices in the game mean little when the powers behind it, and the greater field of galactic politics, are really pulling the strings. Even as they have no choice but to play out their roles, fighting monsters and gaining levels and figuring out the ever-evolving game mechanics, Carl and Donut are still determined to do everything they can to hold onto their decency and, if possible, break the system that's trying so very hard to break them.
This book also contains the second installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret", an ongoing bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.
REVIEW: I never expected to enjoy the first book in this series as much as I did, and happily the sequel both lives up to the promise of the first one and builds on it brilliantly. Carl and Donut have both changed since they first ventured down the stairwell into the first level. Donut's intellectual evolution since gaining the ability to speak continues, as her thoughts grow more sophisticated, though there are still several blind spots, particularly regarding Carl's ex Bea (whom Donut still hopes will turn up someday and they can all be a family again, even as Carl knows the truth). Mongo, Donut's new pet, is also growing and leveling, becoming a useful asset to their little team. Their trainer Mordecai finds his role transformed from a mere trainer to someone who can provide more support, though he still has secrets related to his own run as a dungeon crawler and he may have his own agenda. And Carl himself struggles to juggle the many hats and obligations foisted onto him: celebrity dungeon crawler, co-conspirator with Mordecai, object of a creepy foot fetish by the dungeon-running AI (which might be going rogue), and (hopefully) survivor of a system so rigged that not a single "crawler" from a single species subjected to the cruel and twisted death gauntlet of the dungeons has ever succeeded and won the promised sovereignty of their home worlds back. He also picks up a few new allies and - naturally - more rivals, both within the game and without.
The level itself manages to not repeat the first floors too much, as Dinniman introduces new game mechanics and twists. The third floor brings not only the potential to permanently change species, but also quests and the dangerous "elite" class of non-player characters - which are, in true dungeon fashion, part of much larger franchises and interests, running semi-independently of the whole death-gauntlet-for-humanity main event; becoming entangled in one of their ongoing story arcs can make things infinitely more complicated and dangerous, but it might also lead to certain advantages if a crawler manages to play their cards right, and Carl and Donut both have clued into the need to play the game outside the dungeon at least as keenly as they play the one inside. The end lives up to the title, setting up even more explosive problems for the third installment.
As for the serialized bonus story, this one continues the tale as it explores some of the behind-the-scenes manipulations and mechanics, foreshadowing even greater problems in the making should any crawlers live long enough to encounter them. Even the NPCs are victims in the dungeons, only given enough tools and freedoms to develop a hatred of crawlers and both the willingness and ability to kill them.
The very slight dip in the ratings is simply due to the fact that this time I knew what I was getting when I picked it up, and didn't have that extra kick of surprise. It also flirts with excessive entanglements with all the players, species, factions, galactic powers, and other forces and their various complicated histories, all of which become increasingly important to Carl's and Donut's survival. It remains a very readable and highly enjoyable book, with much more to it than one might expect.
You Might Also Enjoy:
The Game of Sunken Places (M. T. Anderson) - My Review
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman) - My Review
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow (Tad Williams) - My Review
Monday, March 16, 2026
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
The Dragon Quintet (Marvin Kaye, editor)
The Dragon Quintet
Marvin Kaye, editor
Tor
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Five short novels by top writers explore the wonders and dangers of dragons:
"In the Dragon's House", by Orson Scott Card: A storied Victorian house bedecked in gables and gargoyles holds a secret within its ancient wiring, a heartbeat and a whisper and waking dreams that speak to one orphaned boy.
"Judgment", by Elizabeth Moon: The human villager Ker doesn't know what to think when he spies the rocks that looked like eggs scattered along the path, but suspects they belong to the other folk, the people of stone or song, and are thus best left alone. When Elder Tam breaks one open to discover crystals within, a dark change overtakes the people... and only Ker and his mother seem immune.
"Love in a Time of Dragons", by Tanith Lee: An enslaved young woman lives a cold and brutal life until she glimpses her true love in the autumn forest, shortly before a warrior arrives to confront the drakkon that's plagued the area for centuries.
"Joust", by Mercedes Lackey: After dragon-riding invaders conquered his nation and turned the people into slaves or serfs, young Vetch has been filled with anger. But then a rider selects the boy as a new servant, to tend the needs of himself and his dragon... giving Vetch an unexpected opportunity for both freedom and, perhaps, vengeance.
"King Dragon", by Michael Swanwick: In a faerie world of magic and malice, young orphan Will is enthralled by the great iron war dragons that scream overhead... until one crashes in the nearby woods and becomes the cruel overlord of his village, recruiting him as its ambassador.
REVIEW: I found this anthology, originally published in 2004, for a very good (cheap) price at a local thrift store, so even though I have some mixed opinions on a few of the authors, I figured it was worth a try because dragons usually are worth a try. I shouldn't be too surprised that I had a mixed reaction to the stories within.
Orson Scott Card's tale is a long walk of a setup to a somewhat vague payoff in a way that makes me suspect that it was intended more as some manner of allegory or sermon than a story in and of itself. It takes a long time to get to even a hint of a dragon (save a gargoyle that dumps water on the sidewalk in front of the house after every rainstorm), and the boy Michael doesn't really do much or have much agency as he comes to understand his unusual bond with the old house and the energy humming through its walls. Much of the wordcount is devoted to the aging homeowners' love of theater and plays and how they take in foster children (Michael being one), but that all becomes so much wasted word count by the end. The dragon itself is an interesting concept, but generally too vague to really invest in.
"Judgment", set in a world of primitive villages and fae beings (and, of course, dragons), delivers a stronger story. Young Ker initially only hopes to earn the goodwill of the respected elder Tam, whose daughter Lin he intends to marry, but the moment he spies the peculiar "rocks" he knows they're bad luck, while Tam reveals a selfish, greedy streak at the thought of the "pretties" that may be within. This is a world where magic and luck aren't just abstractions, and there are very real reasons for the superstitions that abound in the people's lives, very real and powerful entities about that might take offense and inflict real harm. A fair bit happens, though the ending feels a little unfinished, as though Moon intended to expand it or write more. (I'm not familiar enough with her works to know if she ever did, or if this was a spinoff of an existing world or series.)
Tanith Lee's entry paints a vivid portrait of desperation, cruelty, and almost otherworldly wonder and danger in the tale of Graynne, who has been used and abused terribly in her young life, and finally takes a desperate chance to chase love and freedom by following a handsome would-be dragon slayer... but not all is as it initially seems. It feels somewhat long for the tale it's telling, wallowing at several points rather than progressing, and there's something dark and twisted but also cathartic at its heart. Lee uses language brilliantly here, particularly in the descriptions and in the last parts as she evokes a time jump with subtle terminology shifts.
With an Egyptian-flavored fantasy setting, "Joust" should've been more interesting, but everything seems to work out forever in Vetch's favor despite lip service given to long odds and difficulties, robbing the story of its tension. Yes, he starts out a serf to a cruel landowner (the first of many flat characters), but he's quickly plucked away by the world's kindest and most understanding dragon rider, who has a coincidentally unusual backstory and philosophy that basically hands Vetch a blueprint for his own freedom on a silver platter, and despite being new to the world of dragons and being ostracized by other dragon-boys he excels at everything he puts his hands on. It struck me quite early on that it felt familiar somehow, and then I realized that, in essence, Lackey had just given a light massage to the basic story of Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon books - in which an enslaved boy steals a dragon egg from his master, training it in secret for the pit fights that are the only path out of poverty on his desert world, only Jakkin faced steeper odds and setbacks and took far greater risks - with a light touch of Pern and a dash of Dick King-Smith's children's book The Cuckoo Child, about a bird-loving boy who steals an ostrich egg from the zoo to raise at the family farm (only again, the boy Jack Daw and ostrich Oliver encounter more obstacles and stumbles than Vetch). Lackey later expanded the idea of this novella into a series, but if this story is any indication, I've already read it all elsewhere. Even the titular dragon "jousting" barely enters into it. There are a few nice descriptions along the way, and maybe if I hadn't read the other books it borrowed so heavily from I'd have been more invested (or if something had actually gone wrong or been complicated enough to create genuine tension), but overall I found it too derivative to be interesting.
I have only read one book by Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, which shares a universe with this tale. I did not like The Iron Dragon's Daughter, despite some intriguing ideas, but it was a long time ago when I read it; perhaps, I thought, I just wasn't ready for the story he was telling. Perhaps it was a younger me that felt so utterly repulsed by the ugly subtexts of his world and its hateful, sadistic, monstrous dragons. Well, if it was just me then, it's still just me now. While Swanwick weaves a suitably surreal fairy realm - the sort that hearkens back to older, stranger, colder ideas of fae magicks and ways - I was just plain sickened by much of what occurred there, and did not like anyone or anything I encountered in it, least of all the beastly dragon (let alone Will)... and that's not even getting into the unsubtle rape themes. This is a world that can kiss a basilisk full on the lips and burn to ash and probably be a more pleasant place for it.
At the end, editor Marvin Kaye discusses more dragons in various media... but he not only confesses ignorance about one of the most popular draconic franchises of the time (Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, still classics to a degree), and further mentions a couple movies just because he dislikes them, but then he provides a selection of recommended dragon media that is... quite eclectic. For instance, 1962's Harryhausenesque (but not actually the work of stop-motion FX master Ray Harryhausen) family fantasy romp Jack the Giant Killer (which I've seen brilliantly riffed by the Rifftrax crew - highly recommended, and the movie's entertaining enough, of a bit goofy and thin on logic, to keep one interested on its own) barely features a dragon at all. The websites are, as one might expect more than twenty years after this book was published, largely defunct, save "urbandragons.com", which appears to be a fossil site that hasn't been updated in quite some time. There were many great dragon websites back in the day I would've recommended over this one, though most have long gone to the Wayback Machine.
In any event, having only paid a couple of bucks, I can't say I'm too disappointed in my reading choice here. The five stories did, at least, all feature actual dragons (not "pseudo-dragons" or "dragons within" or other dodges I've seen passed off as dragon stories in other anthologies), and they each are distinctive in their own ways, even if I wasn't fond of the tales themselves. Some of the imagery does linger. But I still found myself wishing for better...
You Might Also Enjoy:
We Three Dragons (Bill Fawcett, editor) - My Review
A Diversity of Dragons (Anne McCaffrey with Richard Woods) - My Review
Here, There Be Dragons (Jane Yolen) - My Review
Marvin Kaye, editor
Tor
Fiction, Anthology/Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Five short novels by top writers explore the wonders and dangers of dragons:
"In the Dragon's House", by Orson Scott Card: A storied Victorian house bedecked in gables and gargoyles holds a secret within its ancient wiring, a heartbeat and a whisper and waking dreams that speak to one orphaned boy.
"Judgment", by Elizabeth Moon: The human villager Ker doesn't know what to think when he spies the rocks that looked like eggs scattered along the path, but suspects they belong to the other folk, the people of stone or song, and are thus best left alone. When Elder Tam breaks one open to discover crystals within, a dark change overtakes the people... and only Ker and his mother seem immune.
"Love in a Time of Dragons", by Tanith Lee: An enslaved young woman lives a cold and brutal life until she glimpses her true love in the autumn forest, shortly before a warrior arrives to confront the drakkon that's plagued the area for centuries.
"Joust", by Mercedes Lackey: After dragon-riding invaders conquered his nation and turned the people into slaves or serfs, young Vetch has been filled with anger. But then a rider selects the boy as a new servant, to tend the needs of himself and his dragon... giving Vetch an unexpected opportunity for both freedom and, perhaps, vengeance.
"King Dragon", by Michael Swanwick: In a faerie world of magic and malice, young orphan Will is enthralled by the great iron war dragons that scream overhead... until one crashes in the nearby woods and becomes the cruel overlord of his village, recruiting him as its ambassador.
REVIEW: I found this anthology, originally published in 2004, for a very good (cheap) price at a local thrift store, so even though I have some mixed opinions on a few of the authors, I figured it was worth a try because dragons usually are worth a try. I shouldn't be too surprised that I had a mixed reaction to the stories within.
Orson Scott Card's tale is a long walk of a setup to a somewhat vague payoff in a way that makes me suspect that it was intended more as some manner of allegory or sermon than a story in and of itself. It takes a long time to get to even a hint of a dragon (save a gargoyle that dumps water on the sidewalk in front of the house after every rainstorm), and the boy Michael doesn't really do much or have much agency as he comes to understand his unusual bond with the old house and the energy humming through its walls. Much of the wordcount is devoted to the aging homeowners' love of theater and plays and how they take in foster children (Michael being one), but that all becomes so much wasted word count by the end. The dragon itself is an interesting concept, but generally too vague to really invest in.
"Judgment", set in a world of primitive villages and fae beings (and, of course, dragons), delivers a stronger story. Young Ker initially only hopes to earn the goodwill of the respected elder Tam, whose daughter Lin he intends to marry, but the moment he spies the peculiar "rocks" he knows they're bad luck, while Tam reveals a selfish, greedy streak at the thought of the "pretties" that may be within. This is a world where magic and luck aren't just abstractions, and there are very real reasons for the superstitions that abound in the people's lives, very real and powerful entities about that might take offense and inflict real harm. A fair bit happens, though the ending feels a little unfinished, as though Moon intended to expand it or write more. (I'm not familiar enough with her works to know if she ever did, or if this was a spinoff of an existing world or series.)
Tanith Lee's entry paints a vivid portrait of desperation, cruelty, and almost otherworldly wonder and danger in the tale of Graynne, who has been used and abused terribly in her young life, and finally takes a desperate chance to chase love and freedom by following a handsome would-be dragon slayer... but not all is as it initially seems. It feels somewhat long for the tale it's telling, wallowing at several points rather than progressing, and there's something dark and twisted but also cathartic at its heart. Lee uses language brilliantly here, particularly in the descriptions and in the last parts as she evokes a time jump with subtle terminology shifts.
With an Egyptian-flavored fantasy setting, "Joust" should've been more interesting, but everything seems to work out forever in Vetch's favor despite lip service given to long odds and difficulties, robbing the story of its tension. Yes, he starts out a serf to a cruel landowner (the first of many flat characters), but he's quickly plucked away by the world's kindest and most understanding dragon rider, who has a coincidentally unusual backstory and philosophy that basically hands Vetch a blueprint for his own freedom on a silver platter, and despite being new to the world of dragons and being ostracized by other dragon-boys he excels at everything he puts his hands on. It struck me quite early on that it felt familiar somehow, and then I realized that, in essence, Lackey had just given a light massage to the basic story of Jane Yolen's Pit Dragon books - in which an enslaved boy steals a dragon egg from his master, training it in secret for the pit fights that are the only path out of poverty on his desert world, only Jakkin faced steeper odds and setbacks and took far greater risks - with a light touch of Pern and a dash of Dick King-Smith's children's book The Cuckoo Child, about a bird-loving boy who steals an ostrich egg from the zoo to raise at the family farm (only again, the boy Jack Daw and ostrich Oliver encounter more obstacles and stumbles than Vetch). Lackey later expanded the idea of this novella into a series, but if this story is any indication, I've already read it all elsewhere. Even the titular dragon "jousting" barely enters into it. There are a few nice descriptions along the way, and maybe if I hadn't read the other books it borrowed so heavily from I'd have been more invested (or if something had actually gone wrong or been complicated enough to create genuine tension), but overall I found it too derivative to be interesting.
I have only read one book by Michael Swanwick, The Iron Dragon's Daughter, which shares a universe with this tale. I did not like The Iron Dragon's Daughter, despite some intriguing ideas, but it was a long time ago when I read it; perhaps, I thought, I just wasn't ready for the story he was telling. Perhaps it was a younger me that felt so utterly repulsed by the ugly subtexts of his world and its hateful, sadistic, monstrous dragons. Well, if it was just me then, it's still just me now. While Swanwick weaves a suitably surreal fairy realm - the sort that hearkens back to older, stranger, colder ideas of fae magicks and ways - I was just plain sickened by much of what occurred there, and did not like anyone or anything I encountered in it, least of all the beastly dragon (let alone Will)... and that's not even getting into the unsubtle rape themes. This is a world that can kiss a basilisk full on the lips and burn to ash and probably be a more pleasant place for it.
At the end, editor Marvin Kaye discusses more dragons in various media... but he not only confesses ignorance about one of the most popular draconic franchises of the time (Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, still classics to a degree), and further mentions a couple movies just because he dislikes them, but then he provides a selection of recommended dragon media that is... quite eclectic. For instance, 1962's Harryhausenesque (but not actually the work of stop-motion FX master Ray Harryhausen) family fantasy romp Jack the Giant Killer (which I've seen brilliantly riffed by the Rifftrax crew - highly recommended, and the movie's entertaining enough, of a bit goofy and thin on logic, to keep one interested on its own) barely features a dragon at all. The websites are, as one might expect more than twenty years after this book was published, largely defunct, save "urbandragons.com", which appears to be a fossil site that hasn't been updated in quite some time. There were many great dragon websites back in the day I would've recommended over this one, though most have long gone to the Wayback Machine.
In any event, having only paid a couple of bucks, I can't say I'm too disappointed in my reading choice here. The five stories did, at least, all feature actual dragons (not "pseudo-dragons" or "dragons within" or other dodges I've seen passed off as dragon stories in other anthologies), and they each are distinctive in their own ways, even if I wasn't fond of the tales themselves. Some of the imagery does linger. But I still found myself wishing for better...
You Might Also Enjoy:
We Three Dragons (Bill Fawcett, editor) - My Review
A Diversity of Dragons (Anne McCaffrey with Richard Woods) - My Review
Here, There Be Dragons (Jane Yolen) - My Review
Saturday, February 28, 2026
February Site Update
February's over already? For a short month, it sure was far too Eventful... Anyway, the main Brightdreamer Books site has been updated, with February's three reviews archived and cross-linked to related titles. (Yes, apparently the new job has had a negative effect on available reading time.)
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Friday, February 20, 2026
The Cautious Travellers's Guide to the Wastelands (Sarah Brooks)
The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands
Sarah Brooks
Flatiron Books
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In the 1800s, a great change overtook Siberia, altering the landscape and birthing monsters and driving survivors mad as often as it killed them. Walls were built to protect civilization, shutting out the Wastelands and their wildness. But in losing Siberia, Russia and China - and, therefore, the world - lost a lucrative trade route. Thus, half a century later and after countless false starts and setbacks (and deaths), the Trans-Siberian Company built an immense train like no other, laying iron rails across the shifting landscape from Moscow to Beijing, and becoming perhaps the most powerful business in the hemisphere. Now trade flows again, and the elite see the Wastelands as just another tourist destination, for all that setting foot off the train is forbidden and "incidents" are still known to happen. The now-classic travel guide, Rostov's The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, has brought many a curiosity seeker to the rails... though many ignore the author's warnings that the Wastelands will always change that which passes through them.
Marya's father used to supply the glass for the Trans-Siberian Company train, a very unique and demanding formula designed to keep the transformative, toxic influences of the wilderness away from the cargo and paying passengers. But something went terribly wrong on the last journey, something that nearly ended the service for good, even though not a single person aboard remembers just what. All the Company knew is that they needed someone to blame, and they decided that person should be Marya's father. He died from the shame and loss of face... and, perhaps, something else, something he contracted during that fateful incident. The Company took all his notes and papers, but Marya is determined to clear his name, for her own sake if nobody else's. Armed with a new identity and Rostov's tome, she steps aboard...
Weiwei was born in Third Class to a mother who died shortly afterwards, and has lived her whole young life on the train, attuned to its rhythms and moods in a way even the Captain is not. The Wastelands fascinate and scare her, for all that their strangeness is as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. She feared her beloved home, the train, would never move again after that last terrible, unremembered trip, and is thrilled when it's returned to service... but something is off-kilter long before the behemoth leaves Beijing. The normal rituals have not been performed. The Captain, normally a constant and steadfast presence, is locked away in her cabin rather than reassuring her crew. And there's a peculiar presence in the cargo carriage. Is it the Wasteland playing tricks on her mind, as it plays tricks with the minds of so many people? Or is something from outside already on board?
Henry Grey was a promising naturalist until he was humiliated in front of his peers for a dreadful error while presenting his ideas on natural mimicry, but he has a plan for an audacious comeback. He has a theory that, unlike what many people think, the Wastelands are not a land of unknowable chaos and possible diabolic influence, but a window into the dawn of Creation and a crucible in which God's own will might be glimpsed, if only someone will be bold enough to study it scientifically and without superstition. If he could bring a few specimens to present at the grand Exhibition in Moscow, he would redeem his reputation and launch a scientific revolution, he is sure. The Company has very strict policies about those who attempt to exit the train in the Wastelands, let alone try to bring items from it on board: they are willing to not only submit the violators to "train justice" by tossing them off the moving cars, but will seal away and allow to perish entire train fulls of people if there is the least suspicion that contamination from outside has gotten in. But great discoveries demand great risk.
These three lives, and many more, will be utterly transformed in this fateful journey across Siberia.
REVIEW: This was the second book I picked up during my last Barnes and Noble trip (the other being Dungeon Crawler Carl); I wanted something different in tone, and the blurb promised wonderful and strange things. (That, and it was a standalone, which is nice now and again.) While I tore through Dungeon Crawler Carl like a parched camel at an oasis, this one took longer to get through. It was the reading equivalent of a strange dish served at a high-end concept restaurant, where there's nothing objectively wrong with it, but I found the service somewhat cold and distant, the ingredients confusing, and the taste hard to describe, making for a generally unsatisfying, if still admittedly different and interesting, experience.
Set in an alternate-history mid-19th century, there's a bit of a steampunk vibe in the immense train and the clash of cold, cruel corporate powers against wild nature that refuses to conform to human ideas or fit into human logic or reason; the very landscape changes between one trip and the next, with colors that can induce madness and creatures that seem half-ethereal and half-demonic. It's little wonder that many people and some churches see the Wastelands as a portal to Hell; many people lost their lives during the unexplained event that transformed Siberia, and despite the massive Walls protecting China and Russia there are still opportunists and rebels who attempt to enter the wilderness only to be driven mad or unmade by the forces at work. To even conceive of a transit like the Trans-Siberian Company train is the epitome of hubris, fueled by the epitome of greed, and after half a century of more-or-less success, it has led to the epitome of arrogance as the Company ignores the warning of the previous trip and sends their train out across the Wastelands again, perfectly willing to sacrifice its crew and passengers in the name of profit and the appearance of total domination over the land, an appearance badly shaken in the public eye by that last incident.
What was the incident? What actually happened? Nobody knows, and only glimpses are ever remembered. The Wastelands cannot, do not, and will not fit into human perceptions, let alone human descriptions. At first, this creates an intriguing mystery, along with the bizarre, half-glimpsed, half-suggested nature of the altered Siberia through which the train travels. At some point, though, forever being told that the characters (and thus the reader) cannot possibly comprehend what happened, what is happening, and what could or will happen becomes a tiresome dodge. If it's all too metaphysical and grand for me to understand any of what's happening, or why, then why should I care?
"Who cares?" became my mental refrain by the halfway point, and mostly persisted to the end. Marya, under an assumed name (lest the Company figure out who she is and what she aims to do, defy their declaration that her father was to blame and prove something else went wrong with their precious train), frets that she'll be found out by the "Crows" - company agents - or the other passengers more than she actively seeks evidence... but who cares what she finds, when I couldn't care much about her? Weiwei discovers a stowaway of sorts that smacks of Wastelands through and through (it takes place early on, so hardly a spoiler), yet still - in defiance of everything drilled into her from her first breath, in defiance of her loyalty to the captain, in defiance to sheer human instinct - decides that she's imagining the oddness... so who cares when "Elena" turns out to be more than she seems? And who cares what Elena's motives are? And Henry Grey, a man so blinded by religious conviction and hubris that he's as fanatical in his own determination that Siberia is a "New Eden" as the Russian cleric who spends the whole trip preaching about hellfire and brimstone, such a flat caricature of an obsessed zealot who is so obviously going to do something monumentally stupid to endanger everyone... but who cares? I never really liked any of the characters, and only occasionally found them interesting; they were all prone to paralysis in the face of decision and boneheaded actions when intelligence was called for (not always, but enough times to induce a few eye rolls).
Anyway, eventually things happen, more or less, building to an utterly surreal and drawn-out finale that featured some remarkably bizarre imagery, but which ultimately was so strange I'm not entirely sure it wasn't all meant to be a fever dream anyway. I'd say some parts of the ending felt unearned for some characters, but that would require me to have cared much about them by that point, and I generally did not.
If you're a fan of surreal alternate histories, the clash of man and machine against chaotic and untameable life, or tales with strong metaphysical and religious subtexts, and you don't mind a somewhat distancing narrative voice that can't always show or tell readers what's actually going on or why, you'll likely enjoy A Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands more than I did. As it is, while I can't say I hated it, and while I can't say it didn't deliver on its promised surreal aspects with some distinct and vivid imagery, it just plain was not my cup of cocoa.
You Might Also Enjoy:
Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
A Master of Djinn (P. Djèlí Clark) - My Review
The Ballad of Perilous Graves (Alex Jennings) - My Review
Sarah Brooks
Flatiron Books
Fiction, Fantasy
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: In the 1800s, a great change overtook Siberia, altering the landscape and birthing monsters and driving survivors mad as often as it killed them. Walls were built to protect civilization, shutting out the Wastelands and their wildness. But in losing Siberia, Russia and China - and, therefore, the world - lost a lucrative trade route. Thus, half a century later and after countless false starts and setbacks (and deaths), the Trans-Siberian Company built an immense train like no other, laying iron rails across the shifting landscape from Moscow to Beijing, and becoming perhaps the most powerful business in the hemisphere. Now trade flows again, and the elite see the Wastelands as just another tourist destination, for all that setting foot off the train is forbidden and "incidents" are still known to happen. The now-classic travel guide, Rostov's The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, has brought many a curiosity seeker to the rails... though many ignore the author's warnings that the Wastelands will always change that which passes through them.
Marya's father used to supply the glass for the Trans-Siberian Company train, a very unique and demanding formula designed to keep the transformative, toxic influences of the wilderness away from the cargo and paying passengers. But something went terribly wrong on the last journey, something that nearly ended the service for good, even though not a single person aboard remembers just what. All the Company knew is that they needed someone to blame, and they decided that person should be Marya's father. He died from the shame and loss of face... and, perhaps, something else, something he contracted during that fateful incident. The Company took all his notes and papers, but Marya is determined to clear his name, for her own sake if nobody else's. Armed with a new identity and Rostov's tome, she steps aboard...
Weiwei was born in Third Class to a mother who died shortly afterwards, and has lived her whole young life on the train, attuned to its rhythms and moods in a way even the Captain is not. The Wastelands fascinate and scare her, for all that their strangeness is as familiar to her as her own heartbeat. She feared her beloved home, the train, would never move again after that last terrible, unremembered trip, and is thrilled when it's returned to service... but something is off-kilter long before the behemoth leaves Beijing. The normal rituals have not been performed. The Captain, normally a constant and steadfast presence, is locked away in her cabin rather than reassuring her crew. And there's a peculiar presence in the cargo carriage. Is it the Wasteland playing tricks on her mind, as it plays tricks with the minds of so many people? Or is something from outside already on board?
Henry Grey was a promising naturalist until he was humiliated in front of his peers for a dreadful error while presenting his ideas on natural mimicry, but he has a plan for an audacious comeback. He has a theory that, unlike what many people think, the Wastelands are not a land of unknowable chaos and possible diabolic influence, but a window into the dawn of Creation and a crucible in which God's own will might be glimpsed, if only someone will be bold enough to study it scientifically and without superstition. If he could bring a few specimens to present at the grand Exhibition in Moscow, he would redeem his reputation and launch a scientific revolution, he is sure. The Company has very strict policies about those who attempt to exit the train in the Wastelands, let alone try to bring items from it on board: they are willing to not only submit the violators to "train justice" by tossing them off the moving cars, but will seal away and allow to perish entire train fulls of people if there is the least suspicion that contamination from outside has gotten in. But great discoveries demand great risk.
These three lives, and many more, will be utterly transformed in this fateful journey across Siberia.
REVIEW: This was the second book I picked up during my last Barnes and Noble trip (the other being Dungeon Crawler Carl); I wanted something different in tone, and the blurb promised wonderful and strange things. (That, and it was a standalone, which is nice now and again.) While I tore through Dungeon Crawler Carl like a parched camel at an oasis, this one took longer to get through. It was the reading equivalent of a strange dish served at a high-end concept restaurant, where there's nothing objectively wrong with it, but I found the service somewhat cold and distant, the ingredients confusing, and the taste hard to describe, making for a generally unsatisfying, if still admittedly different and interesting, experience.
Set in an alternate-history mid-19th century, there's a bit of a steampunk vibe in the immense train and the clash of cold, cruel corporate powers against wild nature that refuses to conform to human ideas or fit into human logic or reason; the very landscape changes between one trip and the next, with colors that can induce madness and creatures that seem half-ethereal and half-demonic. It's little wonder that many people and some churches see the Wastelands as a portal to Hell; many people lost their lives during the unexplained event that transformed Siberia, and despite the massive Walls protecting China and Russia there are still opportunists and rebels who attempt to enter the wilderness only to be driven mad or unmade by the forces at work. To even conceive of a transit like the Trans-Siberian Company train is the epitome of hubris, fueled by the epitome of greed, and after half a century of more-or-less success, it has led to the epitome of arrogance as the Company ignores the warning of the previous trip and sends their train out across the Wastelands again, perfectly willing to sacrifice its crew and passengers in the name of profit and the appearance of total domination over the land, an appearance badly shaken in the public eye by that last incident.
What was the incident? What actually happened? Nobody knows, and only glimpses are ever remembered. The Wastelands cannot, do not, and will not fit into human perceptions, let alone human descriptions. At first, this creates an intriguing mystery, along with the bizarre, half-glimpsed, half-suggested nature of the altered Siberia through which the train travels. At some point, though, forever being told that the characters (and thus the reader) cannot possibly comprehend what happened, what is happening, and what could or will happen becomes a tiresome dodge. If it's all too metaphysical and grand for me to understand any of what's happening, or why, then why should I care?
"Who cares?" became my mental refrain by the halfway point, and mostly persisted to the end. Marya, under an assumed name (lest the Company figure out who she is and what she aims to do, defy their declaration that her father was to blame and prove something else went wrong with their precious train), frets that she'll be found out by the "Crows" - company agents - or the other passengers more than she actively seeks evidence... but who cares what she finds, when I couldn't care much about her? Weiwei discovers a stowaway of sorts that smacks of Wastelands through and through (it takes place early on, so hardly a spoiler), yet still - in defiance of everything drilled into her from her first breath, in defiance of her loyalty to the captain, in defiance to sheer human instinct - decides that she's imagining the oddness... so who cares when "Elena" turns out to be more than she seems? And who cares what Elena's motives are? And Henry Grey, a man so blinded by religious conviction and hubris that he's as fanatical in his own determination that Siberia is a "New Eden" as the Russian cleric who spends the whole trip preaching about hellfire and brimstone, such a flat caricature of an obsessed zealot who is so obviously going to do something monumentally stupid to endanger everyone... but who cares? I never really liked any of the characters, and only occasionally found them interesting; they were all prone to paralysis in the face of decision and boneheaded actions when intelligence was called for (not always, but enough times to induce a few eye rolls).
Anyway, eventually things happen, more or less, building to an utterly surreal and drawn-out finale that featured some remarkably bizarre imagery, but which ultimately was so strange I'm not entirely sure it wasn't all meant to be a fever dream anyway. I'd say some parts of the ending felt unearned for some characters, but that would require me to have cared much about them by that point, and I generally did not.
If you're a fan of surreal alternate histories, the clash of man and machine against chaotic and untameable life, or tales with strong metaphysical and religious subtexts, and you don't mind a somewhat distancing narrative voice that can't always show or tell readers what's actually going on or why, you'll likely enjoy A Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands more than I did. As it is, while I can't say I hated it, and while I can't say it didn't deliver on its promised surreal aspects with some distinct and vivid imagery, it just plain was not my cup of cocoa.
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Senlin Ascends (Josiah Bancroft) - My Review
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Tuesday, February 10, 2026
Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)
Dungeon Crawler Carl
The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 1
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
***** (Great)
DESCRIPTION: Coast Guard veteran Carl didn't know the world was going to end when he ran out of his Seattle apartment in his boxers and too-small pink Crocs, trying to catch his ex-girlfriend's purebred Persian show cat, Princess Donut. If he had, he'd have at least put on pants. But suddenly his apartment building was just... gone. Squashed out of existence in a blink. Just like every other artificial structure around the world, along with anyone unfortunate enough to be inside them, leaving him standing in the freezing January cold with an angry cat in his arms.
Then a voice speaks in his head, along with letters floating before his eyes. Apparently, a galactic bureaucracy has decided that humans failed to properly claim their home as a sovereign nation, so the Borant Corporation has arrived to take possession and strip its raw materials. However, they're willing to give our species a chance to reclaim the planet... if anyone survives eighteen levels of a dungeon-like reality game that have just been built underground. Oh, and the Syndicate broadcasts these events to trillions of viewers, with every move and word under constant surveillance, so do try to keep the essential extinction of humanity interesting for the sake of ratings, or there will be further consequences.
Carl likes a good video game as much as anyone else, but he doesn't want to live through one, let alone carry along Princess Donut, whom he can hardly abandon to the post-apocalyptic conditions on the surface. So when he sees a staircase appear, he ventures down, little suspecting what awaits him as a "crawler" once he enters the first level. Monsters, loot boxes, boss battles, snarky in-game achievements, an all-powerful AI dungeon master with a foot fetish, a cat who can suddenly talk and cast magic missiles from her eyes... all this, and more too, lies ahead if he can manage to survive. Beneath it all, he'll find a tangle of politics and clashing agendas that may spell the end of every living human - or provide unexpected opportunities to cheat the system and the game-runners out of their prize.
REVIEW: It's almost impossible not to hear about this explosively popular series in fantasy reading circles these days, but I wasn't sure it would be my thing. After all, I've been disappointed by popular series before, and I couldn't work out if it would be too crude for my tastes, if it was a one-trick pony of a book, or if the humor wouldn't land (as there are few things worse than comedy that isn't hitting the funny bone). But my new job hasn't exactly gotten off to a spectacular start, and I needed to remind myself that walking into a building full of books need not trigger an automatic gut-clench of anxiety, plus I still had a holiday gift card to burn off at Barnes and Noble. So I wandered in one fateful day and walked out with two titles, one of them Dungeon Crawler Carl... and by that night I'd already devoured over 100 pages. It's been so long since a book grabbed me that fast that I'd forgotten what it felt like.
How did it feel? Good. It felt very, very good.
Some writers, dealing with gaming and fan-adjacent subjects, are clearly observing from the sidelines, having maybe seen a picture of a con or walked past someone playing a game and decided that they could fill out the rest with assumptions and stereotypes and humor that's thinly-disguised mockery (borderline bullying in some instances). From the outset, it's clear that Dinnman is not one of those authors. He understands games and gaming and the culture around them from the inside, and he's laughing with, not at, devotees, in the vein of Galaxy Quest's take on sci-fi fandom. As someone who grew up with the Commodore (still considered the top gaming computer for having the most game titles on its platform, last I looked) and who still enjoys gaming (even if I haven't been able to indulge for a while, in no small part due to life being a dumpster fire loaded with tiny dumpster fires adrift in a sea of fiery dumpsters), this put me squarely in Dungeon Crawler Carl's target demographic. From the snarky in-game descriptors and asides to the stats and the level grinding, this is gaming written by a gamer through and through. (A real gamer, who enjoys playing the game for its own sake, not a hate gamer... there is a difference.) The game itself also reveals much about the creators and how they're spinning the extermination of people on Earth.
But there's much more going on than just looting and leveling and sarcastic in-game achievement announcements. Even in the midst of the absurdity, Carl feels the weight of the end of the world. When he looks at Princess Donut, he can't help remembering his ex Beatrice... who is probably dead, along with everyone else he remembers from his old life. As he watches the numbers of "crawlers" drop each evening with the recap broadcasts, he knows what that means about the population of Earth and the fates of his fellow humans, even the ones whose grisly deaths don't make the highlight reels. There's grief and rage and a desperate need to cling to some manner of humanity in a situation engineered to punish empathy. When he comes across a group of refugees from a nursing home, he's told more than once that abandoning them is the wiser choice if he wants to level up high enough to survive the next dungeon down. (Every dungeon level collapses after a certain time, meaning death for anyone who opts to not play or simply doesn't make it to a stairwell... each of which is guarded by a boss monster, of course.) He also encounters crawlers who, like some gamers, decide the best way to level up is picking off fellow gamers for experience points, even when the "competition" is not just pixel avatars on a screen but living, breathing human beings just trying to survive the end of the world. As Carl gets deeper into the "game" and starts encountering some of the administrators running/profiting off the dungeons, and later the third parties (other galactic clans and factions, talk show hosts, and more), he gets the bigger picture of just how massive the machine is that perpetuates atrocities like the one he's experiencing, the profiteering off genocide and the encouragement of more and more sick and brutal displays of power over the powerless, a self-perpetuating engine of escalating horrors. There are strong shades of The Hunger Games (and too many incidents in the real world) here...
I also need to make a few notes about Princess Donut. Dinniman displays some decent understanding of cat showing with her; Donut is a grand champion with numerous ribbons, and she knows it, but there's more to her than just a prima donna (or the standard, lazy stereotype that cats are selfish and hate everyone). Once she gains the power of speech, she becomes a decently rounded character in her own right. Yes, she's got absurdly high charisma (if at the cost of a weakened constitution), she can be vain, and she yearns for attention, but she's also a solid companion and loyal to Carl, and the two become a true team in their journeys as they figure out how to balance their strengths and weaknesses. She even comes around to assisting Carl when he chooses to attempt kindness and compassion over the brutality the game constantly encourages in its crawlers, and she grows as a character even in the space of this book. They succeed (or occasionally fail) together.
There are other characters, of course, some set up as villains and some as potential friends, but most everyone has a hidden side or complications that round them and their motives out. Hints are given about how other extinction "games" have gone; the Borant Corporation is but one of several galactic superpowers who conquer unsuspecting planets and make their natives run a rigged gauntlet on the feeblest promises of survival, all for "entertainment" and profit. (They pretty much admit that the actual value of the minerals they take is barely a drop in the bucket.) Much of this, of course, will likely come more into play as the series progresses, but enough is set up here to be intriguing and add extra complications and weight to many situations Carl and Princess Donut face in their involuntary dungeon crawl.
At the end, Dinniman offers part one of an ongoing story about one of the side characters encountered, further fleshing out not only the world of the game creators and the crawlers but the "monsters", who are all reshaped and repurposed beings forced to endure the games as well, offering further hints of machinations behind the scenes that will bear fruit further down the line.
If there's any real downside, it may be some of the time spent explaining the game mechanics and other minutiae to the reader and Carl, as his "trainer" Mordecai - himself a survivor of his own world's version of the games - fills in details. I expect anyone who hasn't grown up steeped in games with stat screens and skill trees would be confused or bored by the focus on this. Otherwise, I can't think of any drawbacks worth noting.
I was a little on the fence about whether to go with a four-and-a-half star rating. The Great rating is one I don't tend to hand out willy-nilly; there needs to be that extra something to kick a book over the top. The full fifth star was awarded not just because I stayed up late to finish, but because, at 12:05 AM, I was seriously contemplating ordering the next book in the series instead of going to bed. Maybe I'll just have to get back to Barnes and Noble with my next paycheck, assuming life doesn't devour it all before I can get there. The way work has been going, I'm going to need another reminder soon that rooms of books can be pleasant companions...
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
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
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