Book 35 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year – almost done! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there.
Dungeon Crawler Carl continues to captivate me. I recently finished the 6th book in the Matt Dinniman series, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (2025).
The book continues the tale of Carl and Princess Donut’s descent into the deeper levels of the dungeon, playing in an intergalactic game show for the entertainment of the masses and the profit of the ruling classes. Carl has vowed to end the cruel practice and get revenge for the people of Earth by any means possible, and circumstances have rapidly been evolving to where he might just get that chance.
After slaying all the alien hunters on level 6, a quirk of the rules applied by another crawler propels everyone to level 8. Here, in simulation designed to replicate Earth in the weeks before the aliens essentially destroyed it, the crawlers are tasked with a new deckbuilding game. They must defeat and collect six monsters that will be converted into playing cards, and combat with other crawler groups or major enemies will play out both in the cards and in real time battles. Each crawler team must fight their way to a key that allows them to leave the level before it is destroyed, but not every group will be successful in getting a key. Then, the only way to survive is to take a key from another crawler team, condemning them to death. The system is clearly set up to bring out the worst survival instincts of the crawlers and cause a bloody massacre among them. Carl, however, has vowed that the alien hosts will not break him, and he has been rapidly learning how to weaponize the game rules in his favor…
It’s hard to think of a lot to say about this series that I haven’t said in previous posts! I am still really impressed at how it basically intersects multiple genres of story at once. On the surface, it is an homage and parody of various computer roleplaying games, but it also works as a fantasy story, a horror story, and a science fiction story. The latter aspect has become increasingly prominent in the later books, as Carl learns more about the politics, cultures and technology of the aliens he must interact and fight with, and Dinniman has put lots of effort into the fascinating details. By the 6th book, the universe feels fully lived in, and the drama of the crawl itself is largely indistinguishable from the drama of the universe as a whole. The AI running the game is quickly going out of control and now the outcome of the crawl can have massive effects on the entire alien civilization.
One thing that really struck me in this book is the description of how the aliens, though they seem all-powerful, really stumbled across technology from an older lost civilization and adapted it to their own purposes. It reminded me immediately of a short-lived Marvel comic series, Strikeforce Morituri, set on an alternate Earth that is invaded by cruel and brutish aliens. In a late issue of the series, we learn that the alien Horde was a primitive species bound to their own world who murdered the pilots of a visiting spacecraft and stole their technology. To me, it is a really fascinating and poignant reminder that technology does not equal wisdom or civilization.
The card battling system that the crawlers have to learn is a clear reference to games like Pokémon, where players build decks of creatures and various power cards to battle each other. Dinniman does a great job of making the card battling in the novel quite easy to follow and never boring. There are enough tricks and exploits that Carl and others figure out that keeps things unpredictable.
One other thing that is really rewarding about this series of books is the abundance of payoffs in the narrative! Every unanswered question, every unresolved conflict, every unfinished quest comes back later in the story to have a big impact on the characters and the overall arc of the story. There are some tidbits that have been lingering since the very first book that are only now starting to come back around in book 6!
This book marks another big turning point in Carl’s adventure, I would say, where late in the novel he refuses to play the game the way the showrunners and AI want him to. In essence, the showrunners are trying to get the crawlers to kill each other for entertainment, but Carl and his friends risk everything to fight back. It is a genuinely inspiring moment in the book and a highpoint of the series so far, at least until book 7, where… but I’m getting ahead of myself here.
The title of the novel refers to the most dangerous creature that Carl and Princess Donut attempt to recruit for their card deck, the Bedlam Bride, that can drive people insane with a glance. Suffice to say, this attempt leads to other long-term consequences that have yet to play out later in the series (at least as far as I’ve read).
Anyway, the series still has me completely hooked, and I’ll be reporting on book 7 soon enough!
