Dungeon Crawler Carl #3
By: Matt Dinniman
“I thought of everybody here with me now. They’d all jumped into certain death, just to save me. Me. I couldn’t have survived without them. All my life, I’d felt alone. And now, at the edge of the apocalypse, I finally realized how much I needed other people.”
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
*This post contains spoilers for The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
Overview:
The top 10 list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.
The Dungoen Anarchist’s Cookbook
The Iron Tangle. An impossibly complicated subway system built out of the world’s subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.
But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book.
Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
The beginning of the book has a note to the reader explaining that the fourth floor is a complex puzzle. It is meant to be confusing and disorienting. There is a map at the end of the book to reference how the system works but, in my opinion, it is more fun to try to figure it our with Carl and Donut. However, I don’t think that anyone could have guessed how complex the train system actually is. Just when you think you understand the mechanics the whole thing changes.
I have mentioned this before in the first two book discussions but I would just sit down and wait for the floor to collapse if I saw this floor. Death trains full of monsters trying to kill you? No thank you!
Right off the bat we get the AI showing more signs of rebelling. It was not able to honor the Celestial boxes that the Crawlers were supposed to get from completly the quest a t the end of the third book. Instead, it gave Platinum boxes that all contained Coupons for Free Personal Spaces with upgrades. Personal spaces usually cost quiet a bit of gold. Normally sponsors who pay for these upgrades but there is not need for them to. Meaning the Borant corporation will no receive their cut of that money and the sponsors can jump right into buy better stuff for their favorite crawler.
Things like this make the story much more interesting. Something is brewing in the background and it isn’t just about the Crawlers making their war through the Dungeon. This also means that Carl’s survival or demise is very important to several different factions.
There was three times in the book that I said out loud “oh no!”.
Mordecai’s Time Out
Quickly into the story, Mordecai is taken off the board. Car and Donut are left on their own with no outside information. Had Mordecai been there he would have solved the Iron Tangle much faster and probably helped with the whole Hekla situation. Not having him there made the characters have to problem solve themselves and perhaps sometime in future books they may not have him as a reference (just speculating here). This can be inferred when Carl, Donut and Katia go onto Odette’s show and they are no longer allowed to get information from her. The Borant corporation is making it harder for them to move forward.
Katia Killing Hekla
When Katia killed Hekla I was so shocked. I thought that it would be a while before any of the top 10 were killed. I also was convinced that Katia would never be on their side. Yes, they helped her but I thought she would have stuck with her old faction no matter what.
Hekla also seemed like someone that would have been an adversary for Carl for a lot longer. Because she wanted Donut in her party so bad, I thought that had to happen at some point.
Prince Maestro as Grull’s Sponsor
I never thought that Prince Maestro was dead, I don’t think any reader would think that. However, when he showed up in the Crawl as Grull I was shocked. You know that Carl is going to get out of the situation but you have no idea how. At this point in the series Carl has to survive but everyone else is on the table. Meaning we could easily lose a main character every time one of these Boss fights come up. Gives you a little bit of anxiety whenever they appear.
Mordecai had briefly introduced the idea of sponsors inserting themselves into deities. Because this information was just told to the reader I didn’t have time to put two and two together.
I think that is why this story is so successful for me. We don’t have all the information as readers and are learning everything at the same speed as Carl. Also, the Crawl is crazy and anything can happen so anticipating anyone’s moves is hard. It is really nice to have a series that genuinely surprises you as the reader.
Overall,
The book is not as strong as Dungeon Crawler Carl and Carl’s Doomsday Scenario but still a great book.
The set up of Floor 4 makes you feel as if you aren’t getting anywhere so buy the end of the book I felt as if there should be a whole other portion of the story. The book is over 500 pages but it felt much shorter.
Also, losing Mordecai for the majority of the story was important but having a main character sit out the entire book was not as fun.
Still a great series and can’t wait to start the fourth book.
Rating: 4.5/5 stars
