Once again, this is not a first impression of this book. I’ve listened to it MANY times and it’s part of one of my favorite series.
Here we go, the last of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books that I’ve already listened to. The next one will be A Parade of Horribles, and I cannot wait!
But for now, This Inevitable Ruin. I’ve only listened to this one twice, maybe three times since it came out on audiobook in early 2025. The whole premise is complicated. Carl, Donut, and the crawlers have finally reached the ninth floor: Faction Wars. This is the dreaded floor where not only do the crawlers need to survive, but they’re in the middle of a war. Outside entities— players— are in the dungeon in the tens of thousands to play wargames. The only thing is, thanks to things Carl, Donut, the AI, and the game’s own NPCs have been doing, Faction Wars is no longer safe for the visitors. Just like the crawlers, they will now permanently die if killed within the game.
It took me a while to really make a cohesive description of what I wanted to discuss about Dinniman’s writing here. Partly because I’m less familiar with this book than the others, and therefore was paying more attention as entertainment than with a wordsmith’s ear. Partly because this is book seven, and I’ve already discussed so many things about Dinniman.
This book really nails a whole humongous multi-book, multi-seed, multi-plotline payoff. He even did so while maintaining control over the narrative, seeding and advancing other plot threads, and twisting a lot of resolutions in ways no one could have foreseen.
The nature of this is going to make me have to speak in a lot of vagaries in order to avoid spoilers. So this probably won’t be terribly in-depth to help preserve my own sanity.
First off, this being seventh in the series means it has had a lot of time to build up expectation. Dinniman always knew this was a major destination within the grander narrative because we started hearing about it pretty early, in book 1. In fact, with the very first piece of equipment Donut got, we had a giant sign in the sky saying the ninth floor would require an in-game destruction of a family line.
So yeah, we’ve had this on the horizon for ages, with some notable events on that subject along the way.
Of course, the floor itself being just a giant war was a huge plot device, so we can’t forget that. This is where Carl and Donut’s efforts to break the game come to major fruition. They’ve been working at clearing this obstacle for a long time, both in ways the reader has seen and ways they haven’t seen.
We have the branches of minor plots that have led here one way or another. For some, this floor was always a “deadline” for action on the plot. For some, we literally only learned about it last minute. I’m talking “epilogue of the previous book” last minute.
Then he draws in a lot of thin plot threads that are just sort of dangling every which way, gathers them up, and throws them into the ball of yarn. Or whatever this horrible metaphor is I’m not really maintaining well. But he absolutely does. We get a whole lot of resolution on some of the massive list of minor characters in this series. Dinniman doles out a schmear of closure on a lot of characters, which is sorely needed.
This book turned out to be a great bottleneck, a place where the plot would condense and thin, go from a huge cable to a tight wire. Or like, we’ve peeled away the outer layer of setup that has been used, revealing the delicious banana of plot focus within.
He’s given himself more and less to work with from book eight on. I can’t help but think it’s by design. He may not have known how much he’d have to resolve when he got to this point, but he anticipated how much freedom he had with the initial scope of the dungeon to set up all kinds of plot devices. He made a pretty good open world for himself in the first couple books, all kinds of things and mechanics and character possibilities to play with. He had the freedom to pretty much set up any sort of character or background to suit his needs at any time, knowing that if he didn’t kill them before this, there would be an exit if he needed to get rid of them. If he set up a plot line and only found himself dragging it along behind him as an afterthought because he couldn’t find a place to resolve it, he had plenty of logical ways to tragically end it because WAR.
And yet, he did so much of this in a satisfying way. He didn’t take the easy out on so much. He set himself up for success, and he delivered well beyond belief. There is definitely some value in planning for a ton of loss, of thinning the plot within itself. I’m frankly amazed at the planning process for this, even if Dinniman is mostly a pantser, as I believe I’ve heard. The foresight boggles me, but it’s totally worth applying to your own planning when doing a series.
What frightens me, though, is knowing that the events in this book are just stepping stones to the next big thing. Stakes are getting big, things are getting worse, and it’s getting hard not to get scared.
Here we go, the last of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books that I’ve already listened to. The next one will be A Parade of Horribles, and I cannot wait!
But for now, This Inevitable Ruin. I’ve only listened to this one twice, maybe three times since it came out on audiobook in early 2025. The whole premise is complicated. Carl, Donut, and the crawlers have finally reached the ninth floor: Faction Wars. This is the dreaded floor where not only do the crawlers need to survive, but they’re in the middle of a war. Outside entities— players— are in the dungeon in the tens of thousands to play wargames. The only thing is, thanks to things Carl, Donut, the AI, and the game’s own NPCs have been doing, Faction Wars is no longer safe for the visitors. Just like the crawlers, they will now permanently die if killed within the game.
It took me a while to really make a cohesive description of what I wanted to discuss about Dinniman’s writing here. Partly because I’m less familiar with this book than the others, and therefore was paying more attention as entertainment than with a wordsmith’s ear. Partly because this is book seven, and I’ve already discussed so many things about Dinniman.
This book really nails a whole humongous multi-book, multi-seed, multi-plotline payoff. He even did so while maintaining control over the narrative, seeding and advancing other plot threads, and twisting a lot of resolutions in ways no one could have foreseen.
The nature of this is going to make me have to speak in a lot of vagaries in order to avoid spoilers. So this probably won’t be terribly in-depth to help preserve my own sanity.
First off, this being seventh in the series means it has had a lot of time to build up expectation. Dinniman always knew this was a major destination within the grander narrative because we started hearing about it pretty early, in book 1. In fact, with the very first piece of equipment Donut got, we had a giant sign in the sky saying the ninth floor would require an in-game destruction of a family line.
So yeah, we’ve had this on the horizon for ages, with some notable events on that subject along the way.
Of course, the floor itself being just a giant war was a huge plot device, so we can’t forget that. This is where Carl and Donut’s efforts to break the game come to major fruition. They’ve been working at clearing this obstacle for a long time, both in ways the reader has seen and ways they haven’t seen.
We have the branches of minor plots that have led here one way or another. For some, this floor was always a “deadline” for action on the plot. For some, we literally only learned about it last minute. I’m talking “epilogue of the previous book” last minute.
Then he draws in a lot of thin plot threads that are just sort of dangling every which way, gathers them up, and throws them into the ball of yarn. Or whatever this horrible metaphor is I’m not really maintaining well. But he absolutely does. We get a whole lot of resolution on some of the massive list of minor characters in this series. Dinniman doles out a schmear of closure on a lot of characters, which is sorely needed.
This book turned out to be a great bottleneck, a place where the plot would condense and thin, go from a huge cable to a tight wire. Or like, we’ve peeled away the outer layer of setup that has been used, revealing the delicious banana of plot focus within.
He’s given himself more and less to work with from book eight on. I can’t help but think it’s by design. He may not have known how much he’d have to resolve when he got to this point, but he anticipated how much freedom he had with the initial scope of the dungeon to set up all kinds of plot devices. He made a pretty good open world for himself in the first couple books, all kinds of things and mechanics and character possibilities to play with. He had the freedom to pretty much set up any sort of character or background to suit his needs at any time, knowing that if he didn’t kill them before this, there would be an exit if he needed to get rid of them. If he set up a plot line and only found himself dragging it along behind him as an afterthought because he couldn’t find a place to resolve it, he had plenty of logical ways to tragically end it because WAR.
And yet, he did so much of this in a satisfying way. He didn’t take the easy out on so much. He set himself up for success, and he delivered well beyond belief. There is definitely some value in planning for a ton of loss, of thinning the plot within itself. I’m frankly amazed at the planning process for this, even if Dinniman is mostly a pantser, as I believe I’ve heard. The foresight boggles me, but it’s totally worth applying to your own planning when doing a series.
What frightens me, though, is knowing that the events in this book are just stepping stones to the next big thing. Stakes are getting big, things are getting worse, and it’s getting hard not to get scared.
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