Dungeon Crawler Carl: The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman
Book 5 of Dungeon Crawler Carl. This book was good. Book 4 is still my favorite of the series, but this is easily my second. It focused more on emotional moments for the characters. The long anticipated Bea reunion happened. Donut and Zev plotted a revolution. And most importantly, Donut finally got fireball.
Bizarrely, in the first half, Carl judging kids art was my favorite part. So funny. Why is there always that one kid named Keith or Kevin or Kyle who is just a little shit?
I really enjoyed Carl just being pissed off. Also, that the larger universe politics is coming into play. This was the strongest book so far in terms of character work and themes, but just didn’t land as strongly for me as book 4 because the internal book plot was so all over the place. It made it hard to focus.
Considering the Signet plot has consistently been what I cared about the least over this series, the ending was a really pleasant surprise for how invested it made me in the outcome in those last 50-ish pages.
Favorite characters are now Carl, the AI, Prepotente, and Samantha.
From chaos we were born and into chaos we will succumb.
















