Carl is in trouble- all kinds of trouble. But Carl likes trouble. At the end of book 4, he and his fellow Dungeon Crawler friends tricked a lot of important people, pulling off a stunt that will have ripple effects for the rest of the series. (Who knows how many books that will be?) So Carl wakes up between floors in a legal dilemma. He demands a lawyer, and remarkably, he gets one. Through some skillful negotiations, Carl gets several concessions, including some new spells and bodyguards/mercenaries. Book 5 is all about Floor 6 of the Dungeon called The Hunting Grounds. On this floor, Hunters join the Crawl from outside the dungeon. They are typically ruthless killers who rampage the floor, killing the crawlers and looting their gear in preparation for the Faction Wars, which will be on the 9th Floor. Carl, Donut, Mongo, Katia, and Mordecai work together to eliminate the Hunters before they can get powered up. They make some powerful enemies and some new friends. Mongo even finds a dinosaur girlfriend. The story pushes everything to a climax at an event called The Butcher’s Masquerade, where the top 50 crawlers and the remaining Hunters gather for a ball. There are many moving pieces to the story when they converge at the ball. I probably need to re-listen to that bit just to sort it all out and catch some of the nuances. The Crawlers face Queen Imogen, who is the first country boss they find. They must defeat her to survive. These books are getting longer and much more complex. They hold a lot of political and emotional complexity for books that are supposed to be like a video game. Not quite as confusing as Game of Thrones, but getting close. There are a few moments the author creates where there is no right way out for the characters, only hard choices with heavy consequences. It’s interesting to see how these moments play out and how the characters change. “The goat’s demeanor had greatly changed from the first time I’d met him. Trauma does that, I thought. It’s an explosion with your heart at the center. It changes everything all at once.” There is a lot of evil and trauma in our world. All we can control is how we act.
This is for crawlers, fighters, and dungeon anarchists.