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 up on Earth to the people responsible, though their vow to remain unbroken by the torments of the dungeons faces some serious threats; it is not truly possible to remain unbent or unaltered, physically or mentally, by the dungeons, as their interactions with the former crawlers reveals all too clearly. There's a saying among them, that everyone who enters the dungeons ultimately dies there, and one way or another that seems grimly true. Yet there is still hope, and more than a few humorous moments to keep the darkness from overwhelming the characters (or the reader).
Like the previous books, the central premise of the floor itself is different enough to keep monotony from setting in. The war "games" of the ninth level demand new tactics, particularly if Carl and Donut want to keep not only themselves alive, but save the NPCs who have helped them so much already (even if calling them true allies might be a bit of a stretch; the changelings still have their secrets and their own agenda, as does everyone involved in the Faction Wars). There's also the matter of the curse Donut inherited when she first donned the purple tiara at the start of the dungeon, the one that obligates her to eliminate all heirs of the naga Blood Sultanate in order to leave this floor of the dungeon... further complicated when fellow crawler and close friend Katia revealed that she, too, ended up with the same curse, meaning only one of them can survive. And Carl still carries the burden of the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, which constantly threatens to break free of his control and destroy everything he has tried to build, every plan he has attempted to put into action to get as many people through the Faction Wars alive as possible. It all makes for a very high-octane installment, after some slower setup at the start of the dungeon floor, building to yet another spectacular, complication-riddled finale.
As for the bonus story, this installment is notably shorter, but marks a very sharp turning point in the plot.
All in all, I quite enjoyed this outing, and will be queueing up the eighth book (the last currently published, as of late July 2026).

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