WeHa Book Club

*Spoiler Free Review*

Back to the crawl!!

I actually had to check to see if I’d reviewed a Dungeon Crawler Carl book because I know I had at least started my crawl before this site existed. Turns out, I reviewed book #3 back in late January and read the first two in the privacy of my own book-tracking app.

If you’re interested in seeing my review of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, check it out here.

I have to admit something here, and hopefully the rabid online fanbase doesn’t attack me for this. The story was starting to drag a bit for me.

I really enjoyed the first book because I had never read anything like it before. And I mean that very literally, this was my first dive into the LitRPG genre. For the uninitiated, it’s essentially a novelized version of a Zelda game. Dungeons, achievements, power-ups and loot boxes.

(I mean there are hundreds of other games I could have compared it to, but I’ve just been deep into Breath of the Wild these days and it’s top-of-mind.)

Book #2, subtitled Carl’s Doomsday Device, was a little… slow. You could probably chalk some of that up to the newness of the genre wearing off, but I was hoping for a little more emotion and it simply wasn’t there. Very plot heavy with very little reference to the world of Dungeon Crawler prior to the Crawl beginning left me feeling a little hollow at the end.

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook was a step in the right direction again, but a small step, at best. I had a ton of fun reading it, and I absolutely loved the plot device of the Anarchist’s Cookbook, but it still lacked any real emotional depth for me. Or at least not as much as I would have prefered.

However, I say all of that to say this. I really loved The Gate of the Feral Gods. We finally got a flashback to the old world. There were real emotional stakes and the puzzles and imagery of the actual floor were some of the best of the series so far.

Upon completing this one, I did something I rarely do (as to not influence my own opinions) and looked up a ranking of all the Crawler books. It seems like the consensus top pick is Book #5, subtitled The Butcher’s Masquerade which has me even more excited to continue my crawl. Exciting stuff!!

---

“The Gate of the Feral Gods” by Matt Dinniman