The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Matt Dinniman
Battle lines are drawn
It’s been clear for some time now that the real battle in Matt Dinniman‘s Dungeon Crawler Carl series is not the battle that Carl and Princess Donut fight against the other crawlers. This is intended by the media entities who profit from the dungeons to be the battle. But Carl realized early on that the real enemy of the crawlers is said media entities.
And for the last few novels it has become clear that, despite the enormous power asymmetry (the media ostensibly having all of it, and the crawlers none), Carl wants nothing more than to bring the battle to them. What’s more, Carl, who is, if nothing else, really good at finding ways to exploit the rules to his own ends, has in the last few novels seemed to identify angles and loopholes that might make that possible.
This installment was, to my mind, mostly a world-building novel. Don’t misunderstand: there was lots of complicated action, including a new form of battle fought with cards. But we eventually learn a lot of new stuff about the nature of the galactic systems that make these dungeon crawler games possible.
I wanted to mention something that I don’t think I have explicitly called out in review of previous novel. It is this: the series has a great sense of humor that often makes me laugh. At first glance Carl may appear to be designed to be laughed at: he’s a big dumb guy in absurd underpants making things go boom. In fact, Carl is not very funny. Although he is coded as unintelligent and makes no effort to convince anyway that he does, too, have brains, he is really quite intelligent and insightful.
Most of the laughs come from his companions, particularly Princess Donut and Samantha. Princess Donut has comically misplaced priorities and inaccurate ideas about the way things work. For instance, when Carl picks up a motorcycle, she all but forbids him to keep it,
“Really, Carl,” Donut said, looking the Harley Davidson up and down with distaste. “I didn’t realize you’d actually get that thing to work. Are you planning on growing a mullet as well? Are there any Waffle Houses between here and there? Maybe we can stop and get into a brawl, but only after you bounce a few child support payment checks first.”
It makes sense -- Donut gets what she knows about the world from TV shows that her owner Bea used to watch.
Samantha is a strange one. She’s the severed head of a sex doll, and in some still mysterious way she is also a goddess. She is convinced that she is carrying on torrid love affairs with various male dungeon inhabitants. Most of them are terrified of her. She is also convinced that she can beat anyone in a fight, despite being only a head. (She may be right.)
There’s a lot going on in this one. If you understand it all (and I didn’t) you will know much more about what’s going on in the galaxy after reading it.