With a nod to recency bias, I think This Inevitable Ruin may be my favorite Dungeon Crawler Carl book yet.

I am not sure exactly when this series became the popularity behemoth it is now, whether that happened before or after this book came out, but this feels like the point where I understand how my little corner of the internet became completely overrun with DCC disciples. At some point, the algorithm turned into LitRPG Jehovah’s Witnesses going door to virtual door asking, “Have you heard the word about our lord and savior Matt Dinniman?”

And somehow it worked.

I have gone from “here is a series I like” to having a group of friends who increasingly communicate in Dungeon Crawler Carl quotes. It has become the new Letterkenny, which was the modern version of The Big Lebowski: a quote for every occasion.

That cultural contagion makes more sense to me after This Inevitable Ruin, because this is where the series really starts cashing checks it has been writing for several books.

The dungeon is still there. The ridiculous monsters are still there. Princess Donut is still capable of destroying someone socially before Carl gets a chance to destroy them physically. But the universe around the dungeon has become much more important.

Former crawlers, in particular, completely change the way I see the conflict. This is no longer humans versus aliens. It is the oppressed versus the oppressors.

The former crawlers come from other worlds and other species, but they understand Carl and the current crawlers because they have already been fed through the same machine. The Cookbook stops feeling like a collection of clever game exploits and starts feeling more like revolutionary literature passed secretly from one generation to the next.

The crawl is not the world. The crawl is what the world built. That distinction gives the whole series more weight.

Carl himself has also changed in ways that almost sneak up on him. At one point he is described, essentially, as the de facto leader of Earth, which is hilarious when you remember this entire thing started with a guy running outside in his underwear to save his ex-girlfriend’s cat. But it also feels completely earned.

Carl never chased authority. He just kept accepting responsibility. Protect Donut. Protect the next crawler. Solve the next impossible problem. Find the loophole. Help the people who cannot help themselves. Eventually enough people begin looking toward him for answers that leadership becomes less a title than a fact.

That sense of responsibility has always been what made Carl resonate with me more than most characters in the series. But this book was also where Princess Donut finally became more relatable to me. Carl notices that Donut seems to be maturing and regressing simultaneously. Warlord Donut is increasingly controlled, strategic and capable in public. Privately, she can be snippy, immature, jealous and ridiculous.

I do not think that is regression. I think Donut has figured out where it is safe to stop performing. She hides the doubts, fear, hurt and anger when others need her to be in control. Then the sarcasm and childish behavior come out around the people she trusts. The goofy behavior itself becomes a surprisingly mature coping mechanism.

Carl hides vulnerability behind responsibility. Donut hides vulnerability behind performance. That connection made me finally understand her a little better. And I will be damned if Prepotente, that screaming damn goat, did not grow on me too.

The most impressive thing about This Inevitable Ruin, though, remains the same impossible tonal balancing act Dinniman has been pulling off throughout the series. During one dog walk I went from trying to understand Lucia Mar and the mystery surrounding the Eulogist, to an emotional fight where I genuinely did not know if Mongo was going to survive and was surprised by how much I cared about that damn dinosaur, to a god trying to retrieve his penis from a gigantic ball of flesh rolling through a city.

Later, Princess Donut casts a spell involving Astral Paw that creates a visual best described as cherry pie being forced through a chain-link fence. And somehow none of this feels like it belongs in different books.

DCC remains very committed to making the grandiose sound ridiculous and the ridiculous feel grand. That may be the series’ greatest trick. The humor is no longer just comic relief between serious moments. The absurdity and seriousness have become inseparable. You can go from genuine grief or political commentary to dick jokes without the story losing its footing.

And that makes the emotional moments hit harder than they probably have any right to. Mongo stops being a funny pet dinosaur and becomes family. Prepotente stops being a screaming goat and becomes someone you care about. Donut stops being a ridiculous talking cat and becomes a leader carrying more fear than she lets anyone see. Carl stops being some guy surviving a death game and becomes a revolutionary figure whether he wants the job or not.

Even the increasingly complicated politics outside the dungeon have finally become more interesting to me than many of the dungeon mechanics themselves. That was probably the biggest change in my experience of this series. Early on, I was mostly interested in Carl and Donut surviving whatever nightmare Dinniman invented next. Now I am more interested in the people who built the nightmare, the people who survived it previously, the people profiting from it, and the growing collection of characters who have realized the entire thing needs to burn.

That transition is probably why this audiobook kept blowing past my daily listening goal. My daily habit this year is 26 minutes of an audiobook, a routine I started in 2020 with 20 minutes and have increased by one minute each year. One of my best indicators that I am really into a book is when the required 26 minutes regularly turns into an hour.

That happened constantly with This Inevitable Ruin. I wanted to know what happened next. I wanted to understand more of the world outside the dungeon. And apparently I wanted to know whether a screaming goat, a talking cat, a velociraptor and a man in boxer shorts were going to overthrow galactic capitalism.

What a strange journey this has become.

Ten out of 10 stars.

And now I have one serious decision to make: Do I immediately start the next book, or wait for my wife to catch up? Marriage apparently has consequences.