Yet another Dungeon Crawler Carl book packed with political intrigue, questions about what is actually real, questions about who can be believed, increasingly elaborate gameplay mechanics and enough chaos to make you wonder whether Matt Dinniman occasionally writes finales by throwing every remaining plot thread into a dryer and hitting “high heat.” Eight books in, it still works, even if the last few chapters of these books have developed a reliable trope that can basically be summarized as, “And then many things happened at once.”
A Parade of Horribles does narrow the dungeon mechanics back down somewhat, particularly with the heat system and the races, and I found the actual endgame easier to follow than some of the finales in the previous books. That does not mean the ending is simple. Listening at 1.5x, there were still moments where I found myself thinking, “Wait. How exactly did they survive that again?” At this point, I have mostly accepted that as part of the DCC experience.
What continues to impress me more is everything Dinniman manages to build around those mechanics. One of the races revolves around “what if” scenarios, alternate lives created by changing a single decision. It works as a dungeon mechanic, but also as one of those moments where Dinniman sneaks something heavier underneath the ridiculousness. There are a million possible lives we can imagine, but only one we actually experience. Spend too much time replaying the other possibilities and you can drive yourself mad. In the dungeon, dwelling too long on the what-ifs can literally kill you. Outside the dungeon, the death is slower and figurative, but the warning still applies. Apparently there is some Stoic philosophy buried between the screaming goats and catastrophic violence.
Carl himself also gets another reminder that, despite becoming the de facto leader of Earth and one of the most important figures in the galaxy, he is still an angry, volatile man carrying an incredible amount of grief. And bombs. Lots of bombs. When NPCs are killed needlessly, Carl loses his shit. That anger is understandable because the murder of disposable people strikes directly at the center of what drives him. Carl has spent this entire series watching powerful people decide which lives matter and which ones do not. But understandable does not always mean safe. Carl is increasingly dangerous because his literal arsenal and emotional arsenal have been growing at roughly the same pace.
Then there is the ridiculousness, which remains one of the series’ great strengths. A karaoke bar fight breaks out during “Take On Me,” and Jeff Hays sings through the chaos. I have listened to this entire series at 1.5x speed, but that scene made me back up and replay it at normal speed because some scenes deserve the extra oxygen. Biggs the Sluggalo drops the immortal philosophy of “Unity, support, family…and knee-cappin’ bitches,” which made me picture a methed-out Dom Toretto swigging Mexican Faygo and giving his family speech. There are lonely goats singing Phil Collins, feet-horny artificial intelligences becoming chaotic megalomaniacs, Mongo being appalled, and a sex-crazed latex talking doll head who may or may not be a demigod.
And somehow Dinniman continues pairing all of that with small, genuinely poignant moments that land because they are built around emotions most readers recognize: regret, duty, family, fear, grief, anger, the desire to protect people, and the temptation to wonder how life would have turned out if one thing had gone differently. That contrast has become the defining strength of the series for me.
I went back and looked at my review of the first Dungeon Crawler Carl. I posted it April 4. So for the last six months, my Audible world has mostly consisted of a dude in his boxers, a snarky talking cat, Mongo being appalled, Sluggalos, a foot-fetish AI becoming increasingly unhinged, a lonely goat singing Phil Collins, unadulterated defiance and vengeance, and Samantha doing whatever the hell Samantha is doing at any given moment. Somewhere along the way, this stopped being just a series I liked and became one of those things where a group of friends starts speaking in quotes and references that probably sound completely unhinged to anyone outside the circle. Not to even mention some of the tattoos I see in the Facebook groups.
Beneath all of that insanity, something else has slowly emerged. DCC stopped being humans versus aliens several books ago. It became the oppressed versus the oppressors. Former crawlers from completely different worlds recognize one another because they have been fed through the same machine. The Cookbook increasingly looks less like a collection of gameplay exploits and more like revolutionary literature passed from one generation to another.
Carl has gone from surviving the system to understanding it, then sabotaging it, then trying to break it. I increasingly suspect that underneath all the explosions, game mechanics, gore and dick jokes, Matt Dinniman is quietly suggesting something about our own systems. Maybe it is simply that oppressive systems survive partly because the people trapped inside them believe they cannot be challenged. Maybe it is that solidarity matters more than the artificial divisions between people. Maybe it is that once enough people recognize the machine for what it is, the machine has a problem. Maybe it is even a recipe for overthrowing our own oppressors, whoever you personally believe those oppressors to be. I kind of choose to read it that way.
“You will not break me.”
That phrase has become bigger than Carl surviving another dungeon floor. It has become the thesis of the entire series.
And now comes the genuinely terrible part. I started this series late, and until now, whenever I finished one book, the next one was sitting there waiting for me. Not anymore. For the first time since April, I have reached the end of the available road, and that is a sad day in my Audible world.
Matt Dinniman just better not go full George R.R. Martin on us.
That might actually break me.
