Vonnegut is an author I’d heard the name of for years but never really got exposed to. It wasn’t until I got back into using the library (via Libby) for audiobooks that I started branching far out into the book-o-sphere, and I saw my opportunity to check him out.
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My first exposure was Welcome to the Monkey House which was a nice broad intro of short stories, but I wanted to at least read one full novel. Naturally, I put what was available on hold and… I started waiting for my turn. Only three books were available to borrow: Welcome to the Monkey House, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Cat’s Cradle.

The first novel that came available was not the one I’d heard of, and I could’ve kept putting it off, but I decided I didn’t want Slaughterhouse-Five to bear so much pressure of representing Vonnegut’s novels well, so when Cat’s Cradle became available, I went ahead and listened.
I went into this novel not even having read the synopsis or any book blurbs. I legitimately went in blind to anything except the title, the author’s name, and an impression of his writing style from having listened to Welcome to the Monkey House. So when I say I listened to this book without a clue what I was in for, I mean that.

I’ve found, via the short stories and Cat’s Cradle, that Vonnegut weaves plot together in a loose knot. It wanders in an out of itself, dancing around the crux or epicenter of poignancy, not quite revealing what its goal is or where it’s headed, until Vonnegut is ready to pull it tight so it suddenly becomes an intricate knot. Like dominoes falling into a pattern or something, it just suddenly clicks. The sudden moment of “O. M. G.” I have when I suddenly understand what’s going on, what all these moving parts were heading for… that’s pretty heady.

It’s exactly what happened with Cat’s Cradle. What blows my mind is how rapidly Vonnegut really puts big pieces on the board, so to speak. We learn right away the world is basically over, that this book is about what happened, and we even learn the name of the scientist responsible. We start getting interviews about him, spawning from how the scientist— Felix Hoenikker— was one of the creators of the atomic bomb. The author is wanting information regarding the bombing of Hiroshima… and in the long run, learns about a theoretical side project Hoenikker had entertained: a substance called ice-nine, intended to restructure the way water solidifies. Intended for military use— to keep Marines out of the mud— such a substance would hold the potential to convert all water on Earth into ice-nine.

Through a winding process of personal discovery and insanely odd religion, the author ends up converting and becomes mired in a small, fanatical nation heavily influenced by one of Hoenikker’s children, Frank. We learn that all three of Hoenikker’s children actually have a fragment of ice-nine, and Frank’s chip of it has put him in a position of influence. It’s only once the ice-nine is used as a form of euthanasia for the nation’s leader that the world… well, actually ends for real. Bigger than Hiroshima, bigger than any other disaster. The ice-nine-frozen body is accidentally dumped into the Caribbean, and… ice-nine freezes the world.

The thing is, Vonnegut telegraphed the ice-nine takeover multiple times. It was pretty much slapped on the wall once it was first mentioned that such a thing was going to be the end of the planet. It’s pointed at loudly fairly frequently, as an ominous note that ice-nine is around, in Frank’s pocket, or in his brother Newt’s luggage, and so on. It’s there. It’s THERE.

Personally, most of the time I was listening to the book, I was sort of absorbing it on surface level only. I wasn’t sure I wanted to “let Vonnegut in” so to speak. I’m not sure what I was afraid of, but I was honestly holding the book at arm’s length. Maybe it’s his reputation, my natural hesitation at things recommended to me. Not that Vonnegut was ever personally recommended to me. I think that’s the difference. If something’s recommended by someone who knows me, I’m more likely to trust that. But the general populace… it can be hit or miss with me. When you hear big names get dropped a lot, or fad or popular media, it can be hard to pick which ones might actually resonate with yourself. Like… people love the Austin Powers movies. They were all the rage when I was in high school. I’ve never seen a one and refuse to. I only watched Squid Game because I happened on a clip and enjoyed it, so I decided to see what else the fuss was about. But I adamantly declined to watch even a moment of Tiger King. I read Dungeon Crawler Carl and watched Arcane because a friend recommended it to me.

But Vonnegut… he was one I never had a direct recommendation for. I just knew his name and that he was considered a classic, notable author worth reading. But… that never told me why.

I doubt he’s going to be a favorite author of mine anytime soon, but after two books, I definitely think I can look forward to when Slaughterhouse-Five finally becomes available for me. The more I’ve thought about Cat’s Cradle, the more I realize I enjoyed it overall. So much of me enjoys the concept of spoilers when done right. I’m more interested in HOW something happens than what actually happens. Like… I grew up knowing Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father, long before I ever watched a Star Wars film. And I saw the prequels first, so my first exposure was watching Anakin become Vader.

Once I recognized that that’s been what I’ve gotten from Vonnegut, I was able to really see Cat’s Cradle for what it was. Sad thing is, that didn’t happen until I began writing this very review. I’ve already put a hold on it again. I’m looking forward to listening again. And it’s the mindset I’ll be going into on Slaughterhouse-Five. Because I’m not reading any synopses or book blurbs or anything about it, either.

Well, you guys should know me by now. I like to sort of answer things a bit tangentially if I don’t necessarily feel like the original questions is that good.

“Inspired you most” is so darn selective, and… frankly, I almost find it trivializing. There are so many books out there, and maybe if I was younger with a lot fewer books under my belt (reading and writing) I could narrow things down to a “most” inspiring book. As it is… that would be making something small of what’s really a large question.

There’s no comparison between books that have inspired me, mostly because… well… I take inspiration from tons of small places. Tons of them. A conversation, an observation, an experience, a musing, a passing comment… all of those are sources for inspiration.

So I suppose… I’m going to tackle this in a sort of “name your biggest, longest-lasting inspirations” or something like that. Because… yeah, my inspiration sources are constantly changing.

I decided to write a post about the specific inspirations for my published projects, so that was last week's post. But for this post… let me talk about one of the books that has truly inspired me to be better… by showing me what I do NOT want to be.

Immortaland: The Greatest Fantasy Kingdom to Exist and That Will Ever Exist

So, this is hands down the worst book I’ve ever read, and it’s basically a guidebook on how not to draw people into your fantasy world. I really don’t want to encourage anyone to read it, nor do I want to spend too much more of my life thinking about it, but let’s just say I read it in 2017 and I still remember nothing more than it being totally awful. Let me just paste the review I did of it as a precautionary tale.

“I seriously only read the entirety of this book so that I could write a review with a clear conscience. I can honestly say I have never been so happy to leave a fantasy world than I was to leave Immortaland behind.

Let's start with the claim that it's "The Greatest Fantasy Kingdom To Exist And That Will Ever Exist." Is that not ridiculously presumptuous? Right from the start, the writer is setting the bar ridiculously high. It's claiming that this place is better than Randland, Temerant, Middle Earth, Earthsea, and countless other worlds that are rich and full of adventure, culture, and intrigue. With these high expectations in mind, let's begin to read.

Start out with second-person POV. Oh, so I'm the hero here? Okay. Let's see what kind of adventures I get into.

100% done with the book... none. No adventure. No conflict. Hardly any culture. Zip. I'm not exaggerating. There was nothing here. The entire book is just... description. Not even infodump. It's like someone saw the opening scene of a movie, touring a castle, and tried to transcribe it into text. It doesn't work in the slightest.

So let's try to take it in terms of something like a Dungeons and Dragons rulebook. Maybe we can use it as source material to play with. Nope. Doesn't work there, either. This "world" is nothing but a storeroom of overpowered artifacts and ejaculations from a clicheed imagination. I can't tell you how tired I got of everything "bestowing ultimate [INSERT TRAIT HERE]." The whole time, the character named You was basking in more and more ultimate power. Soaking it in, basking in it, and so on. It was like watching a sequence from Dragon Ball Z where all they do is glow yellow... ad nauseum. Imagine a game where all you do is go around and collect buffs. What do you even use them for? Nothing. There's nothing to purpose there. What's worse, there wasn't even any real connection between the buffs. One throne that You sat in pushed away all negative emotions and cares. But a few scenic places later, You asked a question that's been bothering You, and it was answered. Were the negative questions and annoyances cast aside or not? Even as a resource, there's nothing of serious value here.

So let's take it as what it really is: drivel. I hate sounding cruel, but this was nothing but personal stimulation. It's an exercise in creation. That's fine. I don't understand how this can be considered anything more than a poorly painted word-landscape. It was wanting an editor, something to actually give it some sense of value for itself.

I will say that there is the potential for many stories here. Sadly, this book told exactly ZERO of them.”

In short, do NOT read this book. Save yourselves. You’re already better than this guy as long as you’re not trying to pass unsatisfying softcore self-insert mental masturbation off as a fantasy setting of value.

With so many great, fun novels coming out these days, it can be very easy to ignore past greats. I’m not talking like… the “classics” like the books of Dickens, Dumas, Wells, and so on. 
I’m mostly going to be talking about science fiction in this review, since the book I’m reviewing is sci-fi, so let’s go ahead and steer in that direction. 

Technology right now is  insane. Sci-fi books written even 10 years ago likely have some incorrect science in them. So how the hell can we read something science-fictiony that was written 50 years ago and take it seriously, especially in situations where the future year they were writing about was the early 2000s, where we’re currently living?
It’s that sort of thoughts that make science fiction from the 30s-70s and even into the 80s a little hard to take seriously or digest. 

So when I finally picked up The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I love science fiction. I love classic sci-fi. H.G. Wells was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. Him and Jules Verne kind of set my tone for what science fiction was. Even so, it has been a while since I’ve sunk into any “old” sci-fi, and I almost gave up on The Forever War pretty early on.

Boy, that would have been a mistake. 

This book is known for a reason. It’s like… at least in my experience, one of those hidden gems that you uncover randomly and that really makes a mark despite its existence on the edge of the shadows. 

Quick synopsis: Earth is mired in a war with a largely-unknown alien race we call the Taurans. Our POV character and protagonist, William Mandela, is an elite recruit set to be a ground trooper in a sort of mech suit. His training and combat is intense, demanding, cruel, and just straight up deadly. His fellow troopers die in training, not just in combat.

That takes place in 1997. Thanks to space travel, time dilation, and relativity, he doesn’t get back to Earth from his 2-year war expedition until 2024. By then, the world is very different. His mother is old. The economy had to change to cover the needs of the still-ongoing interstellar war. Earth is dangerous in populated areas and even more dangerous in the less controlled areas. Freedom has a different face. 

So different that Mandela and many of his fellows can’t cope and simply… rejoin the military. Which means a promotion to trainer, but also much more time away. Over the course of many assignments, campaigns, and centuries, we follow Mandela through the war. 

What this book really does is gives the reader snapshots of human evolution in culture and adaptation. Mandela, being a “relic” of the 1900s, quickly grows more and more out of touch with his fellow soldiers. At one point, the man is in transit to take charge of a group of cadets… who haven’t even been born yet. During his transit, they’ll be born, raised, and prepared for him. 

Mandela loses everything he knew for this war. His own habits, preferences, and mannerisms become the drastic minority over the course of his life, where once he was a sort of “everyman.” The people and ideals he’s fighting for warp and evolve until they’re all but unrecognizable. 
There’s so much to unpack here. It’s a little bit of a Ship of Theseus situation for Mandela. He’s fighting for humanity, but humanity becomes less and less recognizable to him as things go on, and the war is all he really has. 

Well, that and his attachment to one of his fellow relic soldiers, Marygay. Their careers meet up and separate for longer and longer stretches, but Marygay remains one of Mandela’s driving factors. Seeing her again, connecting on a personal level with someone who understands him, becomes the main thing he clings to. 

What I think Haldeman did well with this book, which still holds up in the mid 2020s, was not make it about the science. Sure, we get some information about the technological advances of the military and the culture when Mandela’s on Earth in 2024, but… that’s not the meat of the story. The real story is about man’s relationship with itself. What humanity does to adapt, and how we can alienate ourselves from one another through necessity. We see the gradual changes in how humanity examines itself. Most notably, at least to me, is the change in sexuality over the ages in this book. Due to the war and the nature of military needs, Mandela’s heterosexuality goes from something to feed during his first expedition— the soldiers pretty literally all pair up every night to vent sexual needs— to an oddity, to a straight up minority, to almost unique. It gets to a point the man is almost like a freak show exhibit because he’s heterosexual. 

I won’t spoil the ending of this book, even though it’s nearly 50 years old. It would be best if you experienced it for yourself if you haven’t read it. 

But I cried. I cried joyfully and with hope. Not for humanity.

I cried for William at the end.

I know I promised my review of Parade of Horribles right after This Inevitable Ruin but my best friend has just started reading the books and I'm keeping pace with them and won't read PoH until they do. It'll come when we've both read it! 

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I’ve been a fan of Ready Player One for well over a decade. The book more than the film, though I absolutely did enjoy the film! It’s not perfect, but it’s at least fun. 

Cline’s Armada I consumed some years ago too, when it was new. I was less impressed by it and have only read it the once, whereas RPO I listen to probably every year or so.

It was because of my experience with Armada that I was hesitant to read Ready Player Two when I first learned about it. I wasn’t worried about disappointment so much as I just didn’t feel the strong impetus to read it. I was happy to let it be and sort of wait to hear general impressions of it. Then I just sort of… forgot about it altogether. 

Until late December 2025, when a friend I trust (and now I don’t even remember who) said to give it a listen anyway. So I did.

I have very mixed feelings about it. As I finished listening to it this morning (It’s Dec 31 2025 as I write this) I figured out how to condense into a single sentence how I felt about it:

This book demonstrates the difference between the journey and the destination, and while Ready Player One was more about the journey, this one struck me as more about the destination.
So now, let me try to explain what I mean. 

I first read RPO in 2014 and fell in love. The book was a love letter exploring tons of pop culture spanning from the 1970s into the 1990s, all experienced through a massive scavenger/Easter egg hunt inside a video game. Everything was about finding the next clue, then solving it to get the solution, then executing the solution. We had the added stress of the evil corporate entity fighting alongside, a rival faction who wanted the prize for their own reasons that would ruin the paradise that was the OASIS. Spoiler alert: by the end of the book, the good guys win. Ready Player One was about the journey to find the egg, and it was over. With the hunt complete and the main character basically being omnipotent, immortal, and all-powerful inside the game, I didn’t really see any point in there being a sequel. While I wanted more, I was content with it.

Ready Player Two, as I said, was more about the destination than the journey. We pick up after the contest ended, get some updates on how things changed, and get some new technology to experience the OASIS. Then, we get the new quest, a quest only for Wade, the  winner of the previous contest and new overlord of the OASIS. He’s still got his friends Aech, Shoto, and Art3mis inside and outside the game, helping run the company.

And here’s where my first gripe about the book comes: even though things get hinted at a lot about what’s to come, it’s a good quarter of the way through the book before we really get any sort of actual quest progress. We really only sort of hear about it before then. The first 25 percent of the book is largely exposition, a combination of “previously on” and “let’s skip 3 years and gloss over all the shit that happened in it before we do anything else.”

Let’s not gloss too much over it. There is a LOT that happens in those three years… but to be totally honest, Cline made it really boring. At least to me. It feels like… an instruction booklet on how to receive the rest of the information in the novel itself, and that… just sort of rubbed me the wrong way. A lot of time got spent detailing new technology specs, file extensions (I’m not kidding) and just going over what was capable with the new fully immersive technology that lets people feel every sense of what’s happening to their avatar. Taste, smell, texture, all there in great detail. We get a little moment of real explanation as Wade experiences this for the first time but then it all goes back to a sort of expositional dissertation on what happens in the greater world with the technology. The first fourth of the book, the reader is more of an observer to things happening, and once I realized how mired in that observation I’d been thrust, it really rubbed me poorly. In short, the book starts unbelievably slowly. I was lucky that I’d picked up the audiobook for a road trip, and that first long drive section was pretty much perfectly timed so that once I was done, I was actually at a moment that the real conflict of the book had started to sprout. 

Don’t get me wrong, all of the information was necessary to some extent. It just didn’t feel like I was actually reading a book so much as having a whole other book explained to me. And a history book. I won’t claim the hubris to say I know how to have done this all better. I don’t even think I could, and I know that makes me seem like a critical shithead. I guess that’s the whole thing about opinions. Anyway… 

Then we get to the real conflict. Problems go from 0-100 really quick, and that felt pretty great. Honestly, the situation was worse than I expected. It took a little time to really get across just how dire the situation was, and once that was clear, I couldn’t help but get that sinking feeling in my throat when I saw just how little of the book was actually left. I had a lot of concern that there wasn’t going to be enough room to go through everything from a meta standpoint. How were we going to get through everything we needed to when we’d already gone through a solid 2/5 of the book’s length?

I needn’t have worried. Cline managed to cram in some pretty awesome quests and puzzles… but I hated of them. It took me a while to figure out why, and it turned out it was a combination of a few things:

Foremost and least important was that for some of the bigger miniquests, I wasn’t interested in the fandom involved. That’s fine, and that’s why I say this is the least important problem with the book. Not everyone is a fan of everything, and the subjects of individual levels of the quest just weren’t things in my wheelhouse. To spoil them, the main things I’m talking about are the John Hughes filmography and the career of Prince. I’m familiar with a couple Hughes films and I’m aware of who Prince was, but that was it. We had EXTENSIVE segments of plot that went so ridiculously in-depth of fandom references to those two topics that I couldn’t help but zone out for a lot. I was outside the major in-joke of these segments, so there was a whole lot of eyes-glossing-over for me throughout a huge section of the book. It was a little less so when we got to a huge section that involved the First Age of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. I’m at least a Third Age Tolkien fan, so some things were touched on that I understood, but I just couldn’t be bothered to be interested. The deep dives into the content bore no interest to me, so all I cared about was, once again, the destination, not the journey.

A bigger problem for me was that, while I got the import of these deep dives, I never really felt like there was any real struggle. Pretty much each level of the quest was like… a speedrun. Someone knew the answers, had the right items (or knew how to get them) and led Wade through. I’m not exaggerating. The spark of discovery was largely negated by always having what we needed in some form— a way to skirt problems like fast travel, or knowing monsters’ weaknesses. We got past every obstacle without really needing to worry about them. I never quite felt threatened, even when players started to die. Even the final battle wasn’t truly fought by Wade.

But then… we got to the ending, and I honestly feel like this is what Cline NAILED. I was totally entranced by the aftermath of it all. The aftereffects of the quest and what it implied were fitting, and if nothing else, I really feel like Wade finally truly learned something over the course of the book. The future set in the final pages feels right, and I won’t lie, THIS was the ending the characters really needed. The world of Ready Player One feels complete and finished after this ending. Once the book was over, I truly felt satisfied.

Which is saying a lot considering how annoyed I was at pretty much the entire journey. I honestly only truly enjoyed maybe 10-15% of the book, like truly enjoyed it. That said, I’m still very pleased to have read it. If nothing else, for the conclusion. I know I personally have a lot to learn about endings as a writer, and this one was a great example.

​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.

Once again, this is not a first impression of this book. I’ve listened to it several times and it’s part of one of my favorite series.

I actually went into my audiobook history and looked up book publication dates to see exactly when I first fell down the DCC rabbit hole before writing this. I wanted to see my own personal history, where I came into the series. I was fairly certain The Eye of the Bedlam Bride was the next DCC book to be released after I discovered the series. I was correct, but only barely. I purchased the first audiobook on May 27, 2022. The audiobook for book 5 literally released the day before that. In short, I was correct that book 5 was already released before I fell into the series, so this, book 6, was the first one I actually had to wait for.

I’ll say up front it didn’t disappoint. I just finished yet another relisten (since book 8 is coming out in a few months) and to do these reviews, so naturally it’s fresh in my mind. I was listening to it in part with the mindset to write a review about it, but I’ll admit I had trouble the whole time trying to figure out what aspect of writing really struck me. I’m really trying to put myself in a wordcrafting mindset, and less of the technical stuff. I’m trying to discuss plotting, character development, that sort of thing.

So what the heck can I talk about in The Eye of the Bedlam Bride that I haven’t already discussed?

I finally figured it out. Sure, this is something that’s been touched on in the other books, something I could absolutely have talked about for any of them. But it really comes to a big head here.

In this book, we really see the characters flirting with losing everything. We see loss teased and toed. Dinniman rides the edge of complete destruction and collapse of his story and yet… we go on. 

He really puts the reader and characters in serious danger, and while it’s very easy to fall into the safe mental place of assuming the main characters have plot armor, this book really drives home that no one is safe. Dinniman takes a good number of secondary characters, ones that we’ve become very fond of over the last few books, and threatens them in ways that really seem unsolvable. At the tail end of the last book, the reader learns that one character in particular is going to be a major threat on floor 9, just one book away. But in this book, the characters learn it in general, and it needs to be dealt with. We lost friends in the last book, and… we lose more in this one. Dinniman truly spares no one from the punches he pulls. It’s par for the attitude of the powers that be within the narrative, but the struggle simply continues to ramp up at a good pace. The way Dinniman manages keeping the threats in check, keeping things from spiraling out of his own control, is amazing to me. I don’t think I have the skill to do such a thing.

Not yet, anyway. That’s part of why I’m doing these reviews: to critically think and identify skills and techniques I haven’t necessarily considered before, and to get them on my radar.

Dinniman is far from afraid of threatening his characters, and that goes for every single one of them. Carl and Donut have dire concerns over all kinds of things, but they stay true to themselves, and dear god how they utilize things from previous books to manage present problems. This whole series is an epic feat I can’t help but admire. There’s just straight up a lot to learn from the writing and plot/detail development here.

There’s so much nonlethal loss in this book, for so many characters. People we don’t necessarily “care” about as good guys still experience something being taken. And it’s not universal. Losing the self is addressed in multiple ways and to multiple degrees. Everything from body part loss to grief over lost loved ones to mourning things you didn’t know you had until it was taken away happen here. We see loss of control and autonomy, even briefly. The possibilities of how we can be hurt are not shrunken from. Dinniman really takes out the safety net, or the feeling of it, at least. Nothing is safe. No one is safe.

That’s a big lesson to take as a writer. You hear the saying “kill your darlings” but we seriously have a much deeper and more apt example than just those words in this book. Maim your darlings would almost be more apt a description, but… the point is there. 

I need to be less gentle with my characters. 

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.

We’re working our way through the series, aren’t we? Going to be interesting when we get to the latest book, because that’s going to be a first impression. Comes out in May, so by the time we get to its release, timing-wise, I should be able to get it, listen to it, and write my review before it needs to be up here. 

Anyway, for now, we’re on book 5, The Butcher’s Masquerade. I was nearing the end before I finally figured out what aspect of writing and storytelling I wanted to focus on for it, but it jumped out at me pretty suddenly when I started thinking about it. For this book, it’s a matter of meta-storytelling, what exactly happens in this book that made me want to have a discussion. 

This is a major turning point in the series. The Butcher’s Masquerade is the book where our protagonist, Carl, finally makes the switch from reactive to proactive.

In simpler terms, this is when Carl stops being recipient to events and starts taking action to create events. This is the book where Carl takes the future into his own hands and starts directing the narrative himself, as much as he can. More than anything, it’s when he begins rebelling against the system in earnest, taking direct action and having a plan in place, rather than taking opportunities as he sees them. Carl has finally gotten to a point he cannot just sit and accept unfairness anymore. 

I’m going to try to avoid detailed spoilers, but no promises. So proceed with caution.

This book is the one where he starts exploiting his position, most notably his audience. The advantages his new adversaries on this floor, the Hunters, have is something he calls out right away. Knowing he’s being watched (and knowing the Hunters can communicate with the audience to get inside information on locations, skills, equipment, etc), Carl makes a quick point of complaining loudly about his opponents cheating. 

Even more shocking, he has plans from the very beginning to upset the “natural order” of how the game progresses on this floor. The Hunting Grounds is where real people from the galaxy outside the dungeon come to gather equipment and experience for the future game coming in a few floors. These “guests” can actually die here, but a big part of their goal is to slay the crawlers like Carl and his friends. They won’t be released until the first day or so has passed, but that’s not stopping Carl. He refuses to run and hide like the crawlers pretty much always have to. Instead, he takes advantage of their laziness and false sense of secure superiority and attacks the outright, taking out a shocking number. 

It only grows from there. This is the book where Carl’s true goals start to show themselves. He wants the “natural order” of things disrupted in every way possible. And he’s not just thinking of now, either. He’s looking at the long-term, the endgame. He’s working to break the crawl altogether, and Dinniman works to really tie a lot of threads together into a cable that does some serious emotional damage this book. Along with Carl’s anger and action ramping up, the harsh truth is it’s getting to the point damage done to Carl and the characters we’ve come to love up until now is also getting worse. We can’t help but lose people and even things we love. 

That’s really all I’ll say at this point. The last section of this book hurts. Stab after stab comes, and it’s a lot to endure. There’s a particular question from Donut that breaks me every time I read/hear it. I’ve felt that way, and I haven’t even been through a fraction of the shit Donut has to this point in the series. It’s so real, such raw emotion that I can’t imagine any sane person not choking up at what these characters are going through.

The transformation from reactive to proactive happens so gradually over the course of the previous book (The Gate of the Feral Gods) and into this one that I hadn’t really thought about it before now. But I’m glad I did. Carl’s conviction is really what solidifies, and the biggest moment I can think of to illustrate the difference comes from a moment in the previous book. SPOILERS FROM HERE, so be aware these will not be avoided.

I’m talking about Loita’s death. In the previous book, Carl didn’t decide until the pretty literal last minute to go through with his plan to try and off her. There was no hesitation about the attack on Zochau, which also killed real people. And a lot of them.

In short, this is where Carl’s agency finally makes that switch from responding to the world around him to fully taking charge and trying to make things different his way, rather than playing by the rules. It’s, like I said, almost so subtle a change that it’s hard to pinpoint. But it’s easy to accept because it’s so very… Carl. If anything, I’d say a lot of the shock comes from finding out exactly how alike Donut is, how she’s been doing things Carl doesn’t know about. Things along the same vein, but in a very Donut way.

Vive la révolution.

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.

Already up to book 4 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and it wasn’t until a good halfway through that I figured out just what I wanted to discuss from a writerly standpoint on this novel.
Time skips. Missing out.

So, one of the big points of stories is to put the consumer in the middle of the action. We want immersion, to be the hero or villain as the mood strikes us, to feel the emotions, hear the sounds, experience the action. We want to be in the story, to know every bit of activity that's going on in the world around us.

That's why when something is left unknown, it's either a huge thorn in our sides, a tease, or a crime. It's why we see movie scenes where the villain tells his master plan, even just to a minion. It's why we get the cheap "We all know that" exposition dumps to put things into context, and it's why we as the consumer get to know things the protagonist might not know.

It's also why it's such a great tool to use to build tension and stress in your readers (or viewers or listeners). Having your readers not having all the information can be priceless, but it's a very fine line to cross. My mind goes to Sherlock Holmes, where there are tons of details the reader simply cannot know, but the characters (Holmes, in particular) do know. Part of the charm of Holmes stories is in the role the reader plays. We're the Watson, the observer, and we get to experience the same wonder at deduction as those around the detective. It's heavy handed missing out there, but it's for a purpose, and one that suits the genre.

Doing something like that in a fantasy story, banking on the reader's being woefully ignorant of crucial information, can be more harming than anything. So missing out is a tool to be used skillfully and sparingly, at least in general.

But when you miss out on events, when you're reading a book through the eyes of a character who has a finger in every pie... well, that's a situation where our own immersion works against us.

In The Gate of the Feral Gods, we have a big time skip. In the series, each floor of the dungeon only exists for a certain number of days. Because of that, every day is critical. Every hour is, even. It's time to figure out the first priority: getting down to the next floor. After that, it's crucial time to train, to grind, to work on bigger problems like keeping as many other humans alive as possible and breaking the system from within. You know, all that stuff.

So losing FIVE DAYS is a humongous blow. When a floor is only open for fifteen days, losing five of them is literally stealing a third of your time there. There's no way to get them back and no way to know exactly what happened in those hours. Sure, we hear bits and pieces of what happened, but it's literal time lost with no recovering. Just dealing with the loss and moving on.
The first time I listened to the book, I was talking about the loss with the friend who introduced me to the books. At the time, from an author standpoint, I wondered if the reason for such a theft of time was for a couple reasons:

1. The book was getting too long and needed trimming management

2. The actual content planned was thin and would have needed a lot of somewhat useless fluff to flesh out to the usual standard

3. The author had written himself into a corner on the plot points involved there and this was an easy out

That's meta-thinking there, like I said, from an author standpoint. What I neglected to think about at the time were the real stakes. I missed the trees because I was looking at the forest. The gaps Dinniman put there did a number of great things plotwise on several levels. It advanced the agency of many supporting characters. It upped the tension and urgency of Carl and Donut, who lost the time directly. The loss is reacted to and felt so suddenly, because it feels like no time passed. Like a coma or blackout. The time is just gone, for the reader, as well. Time becomes a commodity that can be stolen, just like anything else.

You know where else time becomes a rationed commodity this way? Interstellar.

It's the ticking clock, the looming deadline, and that's what Dinniman really ramps up in this book: that ticking clock. And he does it with a gut punch.

Don't be afraid to steal time from your readers or make them miss out. It can be useful just like any other technique. Practice at it. Make it hurt... but don't make it destroy too much.

​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.

So, DCC book 3, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. 
This is by far one of the most confusing books I’ve ever read, but the amazing thing is, I don’t care. I’ve listened to this book probably going on 10 times at this point, and I still only maybe halfway understand the mechanics of it.
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But that’s kind of the point, and it’s what I’m going to focus on for this review.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. They say art is amazing because everyone experiences and interprets it differently. Those sayings could not be more true that when you inspect the Iron Tangle. So, a little context, without getting spoilery. This floor of the dungeon has its own unique theme, one that in story context they say is ambitious and unlike anything done before. 

Trains. A massive network of trains and train stations. Doesn’t sound so bad, right? Well, if you’ve ever navigated a metropolitan mass transit system, you’re maybe prepared for like 10% of what this floor has to offer. The Tangle is exactly what it is named: a tangle. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of train lines and a ridiculous number of train stations. Monsters ride the rails. Some trains only go on one-way trips. Some are on looped tracks. The characters have a whole thing going on most of the book trying to figure out where they want to go and then how to even get to where they want to be. It’s a total mindfuck to try and sort out and… Dinniman doesn’t care, in the best way.

He’s managed to write an entire book set in a place no one really understands. At least, no reader does. The point of a lot of the setup is that the layout makes sense to people in the DCC greater universe because it’s based on the context of things they’re familiar with but we simple Earthlings aren’t. We haven’t been exposed to a lot of the everyday technology, culture, and possibilities of the universe in the book series. We literally lack the context needed to interpret the art of this floor of the dungeon.

And that is what makes me, as a writer, admire what Dinniman has done. Not only has he created something completely alien, he has gotten across that it makes sense to aliens but not to us. The book actually has a disclaimer saying it’s really best not to try to understand the Iron Tangle.

It’s like a masterclass in bullshitting, when you get right down and think about it. I mean, to be totally honest, fiction writers/storytellers are nothing but professional bullshitters. I say that as a novelist and collaborative storyteller (read: tabletop RPG Game Master.) The whole job is to make up entertaining or poignant bullshit and make it look intentional. 

I don’t know if that’s something Dinniman really set out to do, or if he lucked into it, or what. Whatever the reason for the Iron Tangle being the affront to Earth logic the way it is, he did a great job bringing the characters along to understand their surroundings while still making it a challenge for the reader to make much sense out of it. It doesn’t help we pretty much cannot have a visual representation of it, mostly due to scale and a piece of huge context we get about it late in the book. The key to cracking it, so to speak. I’m sure someone, somewhere could make a real valid visual of it, but I absolutely would never take that kind of thing on myself.

This is a book where you really do just sort of need to let the setting wash over you. Everything else Dinniman has established so far in the series is still present and still at the forefront. The people are first and foremost. Their relationships, arcs, their fallings out, it’s all there. A lot of great interpersonal drama happens this book, and not always involving the characters you think will be involved.

It’s not even my least favorite DCC book, despite the confusion inherent in the level itself. Maybe it’s my inability to actually visualize stuff in my mind anyway that lets me brush off the frustration of trying to imagine the Tangle. Maybe not. Either way, always a good read or listen, this one. 

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.
​
I don’t think I’ve talked about this yet publicly, but those who know me should be familiar with my thoughts on the second book of a series. Second books are hard, and at least to my perception and experience, a lot of that is because of the nature of story structure. The beginning setup is exciting, the buildup to and crux of the climax are cathartic. But between those two areas, it’s hit or miss on how much excitement you can really manage. There’s a fine balance between boring and keeping things too tense and high-emotion for too long. Make things too exciting early, and you don’t leave yourself anywhere to grow to for the ending, and it becomes disappointing.

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario doesn’t have those problems.

I honestly don’t know how Dinniman does it. This is only book 2 of the series, and it’s just as exciting, fresh, and involved as book 1. The stakes are higher, the micro and macro plots all chug along at good paces, and the character growth is steady but still contained. He’s got a tight rein on the story and character growth, which I almost can’t even fathom. The road map this man must have, even of just the basics of things like abilities and stat growth, must be insane. It’s my understanding that Dinniman is largely a pantser, which I respect immensely. Not planning for me is a huge disaster when it comes to actually finishing projects, so I need a detailed idea about where I’m going, if not also how I’ll get there.

Anyway, a quick shakedown of what this book’s about. Now through the “tutorial” floors of the dungeon, Carl and Donut get to go through the game’s race and class selection before starting the third floor, the first of the regular themed floors. In the dungeon, floors 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 all share a common overarcing form and storyline, based off an old fable or child’s tale. Floor 3 is the Overcity, and it’s also the first time players are randomly spawned, so it opens up the character list to people from all over the world, not just the geographic location we started in.

The game has gone open world, baby! Even so, each book being its own setting change (yeah, that’s kind of the format of the series, not a spoiler) is a great tool in his belt for this. Each floor is self-contained, so there’s a lot of freshness with the problems of each area, with really only interpersonal issues being what’s carried over. Any floor issues are cast away with the ending of the floor. And there’s still the greater universe outside the dungeon in play, but that’s semi-intangible.

In this book, we also get introduced to quests, elite mobs, a day/night cycle, all kinds of things. New skills, spells, and gear abound.

And yet, Dinniman controls everything to a ridiculous degree. Sure, every single living player has moved far beyond the capabilities of a normal human, but there are still limits to what is possible.

For example, Carl doesn’t really have any good way to ascend or descend unless there are like… stairs or ladders.

That’s something I can really say for Dinniman. He’s great at pointing out small weaknesses and flaws in his characters and making them bigger than they seem to be or even should be.

There’s a lot to learn from Dinniman in this book about pacing, growth, and exploiting the failures and flaws of your characters. And I gotta say, what a climax and denouement to this one!