The Gate of the Feral Gods
Matt Dinniman
The rebellion continues
I complained about the previous Dungeon Crawler Carl novel The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook that Matt Dinniman had bit off more than he could chew in the world-building department. Level 4 of the dungeon was very complicated, and so much of the reader's attention was dedicated to the problem of explaining and understanding it that it somewhat eclipsed fundamentals like plot and characters.
In novel 4, The Gate of the Feral Gods, we are on level 5 of the dungeon, and the story-telling balance is a little better. In this level the crawlers are trapped in 1,172 bubbles, each containing one or two hundred crawlers, and each with four problems to be solved before the escape to level 6 can happen. For most of the novel we are in bubble 543 with Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, Katia, Mordecai, and a bunch of other crawlers. Things do get more complicated towards the end, as many of the crawlers manage to break out of their bubbles, but I found it much easier to wrap my mind around what we saw of level 5 than level 4.
Second, Carl is more focused on what I take to be the plot of the series as a whole: his rebellion against the exploitative Dungeon system. This problem was introduced early on when Carl recognized the dungeon-masters as the Real Enemy. It took on extra focus in novel 3, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, when Carl acquired a book written by previous anarchists plotting the takedown of the system. In this novel Carl plots a blow to the Corporate Overlords, based on the artifact named in the title, the Gate of the Feral Gods.
There are a couple neat little plot twists near the end, one I didn't see coming, and one that I've been expecting from the beginning of the series. They were both satisfying, and I look forward to seeing how they play out in novel 5.
Onward!