Matt Dinniman: The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl #5)

The next Dungeon Crawler Carl book. Next level of the dungeon is not only filled with ferocious dinosaurs and cruel elves, but it also contains “hunters”, aliens who have paid good money to partake in the slaughter and to hunt crawlers, the humans who still survive. But this time, they are in for a surprise: the humans cooperate and fight back with good success, and the hunters will turn out to be the hunted. The level will culminate in “The Butcher’s Masquerade”, a grand ball meant for top crawlers and hunters. It is supposed to be a peaceful gathering and feast, but who would believe that? Not Carl and his companions and friends. And they are right, of course. 

This was a pretty long book, perhaps too long. Compared to the previous part, I didn’t like it as much, as things seemed to move a bit too slowly—there was a lot of staying in one place, waiting for other people to get things ready for the plots they were hatching. Most of these plots were not revealed to the reader. However, in contrast to the slow pace, the ending was a bit too rushed, with almost every character from the books involved. Since I have a very poor memory for names, it wasn’t easy to keep track of things. On the other hand, as most of the characters died, it didn’t matter so much in the end…  

Because of these pacing issues, I felt this wasn’t the best one in the series, and was worse than part four. However, my reading experience may have suffered because I had a few other books I “had” to finish while simultaneously reading this one. Even so, I am looking forward to the next; this wasn’t series-ending bad by any means. 

732 pp