Saturday, November 8, 2025

Matt Dinniman: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl #3)


I continued this series almost immediately after the previous book.

The next level in the dungeon is strange. It consists of different trains running between stations and monsters travelling on them, and filling most of the stations to the brim. And in many cases, they are replicating at a speed that makes it practically impossible to clear out a station. So, the level is pretty deadly. How to survive? Especially when Carl and Princess Donut lose their guide for most of the time they spend on this level. On the other hand, Carl has received a guidebook about the workings of the dungeon, but he can’t tell anyone about it, or it will disappear from his inventory. Well, they survive by reckless behavior and taking a lot of risks and high inventiveness, and with good cooperation with other “people” (most have so many enhancements and have chosen different races/classes that they mostly don’t look too much like humans anymore), in the dungeon. And by not trusting certain people, even if they seem trustworthy or friendly. 

 The book was quite confusing, as the train system and its functioning were nearly impossible to understand. There was even a warning in the foreword about the complexities of the system and how you should not care about that. Perhaps the better choice would have been to create something easier to understand and ditch the warning? Because of that, this was the least favorite book of the series so far for me.  


534 pp. 

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