I have read that Matt writes “organically” and doesn’t have a definitive plot line in place, letting his characters write the story as he goes… and it show… his characters have written him into a corner and he isn’t skilled enough as a writer to get out of it.
The books started out with a real sense of being in a D&D game, but the world has just become ridiculous for no benefit to the story. A pasta tube water park where all the tubes lead to the neighborhood bosses butt…. a bunch of 4th grade boys are giggling their asses of at this, but why? Even these 4th grade boys wouldn’t have put this in one of their D&D games.
The story arcs of many of the characters have pettered out so let’s promote side characters from previous books and introduce 100 new ones. Jamal was funny for a while, now it is just a racist knock on Indians and he actually does NOTHING to justify his presence in the book. The whole story about Dong and his split personality lover just seems to be thrown in there to have a gay story line and for no other purpose. To make it fit a complicated, tangential god driven story line had to be created so there is a place for them to fit in the narrative. Why does Eli need a pervert fan following her around the dungeon other than to be the source of pre-pubescent boy sex humor. I assume that all this is to show Carl’s growing obsession with saving EVERYBODY, but as a literary device, this is a 20 lb sledge hammer swung at the reader’s head.
As for the core characters, Prepatente must have been hit in the head somewhere along the way because his abrupt personality turnabout to nice, part-of-the-team guy is a massively too fast bit of character growth. As for Carl, I get that his personal journey is a big part of the story Matt wants to tell, but while Matt did a great job in the early books writing a LitRPG story, he is nowhere near as skilled at writing deep pshchological, personal development. At the start of the story, Carl, is a slightly angry, act first, think later guy who likes to blow shit up. The story worked because he was simple and straightforward and we really wanted to know what he was going to do. Now he is an emotional, whiney mess that actually blames himself for almost everything. For example, he blames himself for giving Dong a sentient weaopn several floors ago that turned against him, really, who would actually respond that way. Matt has really gone too far with the “trying to save everybody” emotion, shoving it down the reader’s throat at every turn. I understand that Carl is slowly breaking down emotionally, but don’t ruin one of the most engaging characters I have read in a long time… I am getting to the point where I don’t care anymore what Carl does, and when that happens, why read the book. Meanwhile, Donut is still an annoying, petty bitch that hasn’t had any character growth in the last three books. I get it, she’s WAS a cat, but in the context of the story she should now be more and, as just one example, ranting for too many pages about how she hates hedgehogs is annoying and doesn’t progress the story in the least.
The more subtle humor of the first books has been replaced by slap you in the face sexist and racist bathroom humor, again to no benefit of the story. Aside from the karaokee bar fight scene, which is a top ten scene in the whole series, there were few truly laughable scenes in the book. And why drop almost completely one of the best interlude mechanisms from the early books… the AI’s acheivement announcements. Yeah, the AI is devolving, but the whole book is built on non-sensical (and I mean non-sensical even in an imaginary universe where aliens have turned the world into a D&D game) stuff just happening for no reason other than to progress the plot, so it wouldn’t have been hard to make up some reason why the AI couldn’t still do one of its defining acts.
I am no longer able to keep track of all the crawlers, NPCs, gods, and off worlders. The story should be getting sharper as it proceeds to the end, unfortunately it started losing focus after Butcher’s Masquerade and all focus is now lost. Like the last two or three books, this one needs a serious edit and about 30% fewer pages. Seven races could have been three, off world political intrigue is too complicated, too poorly written, and seemingly just tossed in with no coherent plan when a plot device is needed to move things along. It seems like Matt wants to finish the series and has 1000 ideas and he can’t pick the 20 he wants to truly develop so he mashed all 1000 together, threw it at the proverbial wall, and hoped something would stick.
I believe Matt is considering splitting the final book into two parts. For the love of Grohl, please give us a tightly written 400 page/15 hour story that wraps things up for Carl and Donut and the few other core characters. I am 8 books in, I’ll probably get the 9th book, or maybe I’ll just read the Cliff’s Notes version, or whatever the kids use these days to avoid reading Jane Eyre for AP English.