The Butcher's Masquerade Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #5 Published by Dandy House on October 20, 2024
Pages: 722
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Goodreads
Fantasy. LitRPG. Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose. Run, Run, Run. A lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed "The Butcher's Masquerade." The sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds. As the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, a new, terrible threat looms. Outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are here and ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career. But their prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back. Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut return in book five of the acclaimed litrpg series.
Review:
Equal parts wacky, explosive, ridiculous, epic, hilarious, addictive, and FUN. The world-building is excellent, and I love how our characters are holding up. It’s harrowing and quite heartbreaking at times. I love intergalactic politics. I love all the different monsters, aliens, spells, and stories. It’s honestly so fun to read. It’s pretty lengthy but entertaining nonetheless. Dinniman digs in. The Crawler Carl series has had a bit of an ebb and flow, with several books focusing on different topics. Gate of the Feral Gods focused on RPG puzzles and MASSIVE boss battles. It was a creative book, but the enjoyment depended more on your interest in oversized, absurdist kaiju fights. But The Butcher’s Masquerade changes focus: less onscreen action and significantly more character development. It turns out that was the wise decision. Not to say that there isn’t plenty of action. There’s some refinement with a more precise focus on character abilities and strategy.
Throughout the series, the author has dropped hints at potential future events. Much of this felt like part of the formula than a concrete plan. It was part of the loot cycle; Mordecai would warn that future floors would require events and strategies, Carl would have to look out for specific other crawlers, and certain equipment would bring a risk of coming dangers. But until this point, most of these issues had been hypothetical. So, the series switches gears to use this long-term thinking better. And fortunately, for the most part, she nails it. It’s a little uneven in length, but the strength of the serialized narrative makes up for any shortcomings. This reads like playing an entire video game, and it works.
Butcher’s Masquerade focuses more on Carl’s and Princess Donut’s relationship, making me a ride-or-die. It could have all been a joke, but they love each other. They’re a team; they have to make decisions that will put them or their partner in trouble and weigh the choices they make on their own. Donut is becoming her person, increasingly powerful (a far cry from the prissy housecat). She has a great solo fight that shows that she is a formidable opponent, given the skills we’ve personally seen her level up. Team allegiances are discussed, and Carl has to seriously consider that something could happen to him or accept that his feline teammate has to move on. This focus on character excites me to move forward, and I hope Dinniman can follow through with this level of quality.
There’s more to the book, of course. The world is more of what you would expect from a fantasy story than the far-out world of book four. It’s a standard RPG realm with towns and an elf kingdom. Crawlers have to kill the mini-boss mayors of the cities, and then they can fortify the villages and have the NPCs fight for them. A former pet goat named prepotente, who was given a magic intelligence biscuit, has, himself, turned into a powerful sorcerer. This character, who started in the background for a long time, comes forward and is one of the best parts. There’s a legitimately emotional scene with him. And it always still feels like he’s a goat who was given sentience. And there’s a dangerous mantis alien and her daughters who become the main villains. And a lot more dinosaurs than you’d think. I try to pace myself with these, but I’m itching to move on to number six.
About Matt Dinniman
Matt Dinniman is a writer and artist from Gig Harbor, Washington. He is the author of the best-selling Dungeon Crawler Carl series along with several other books about the end of the world. He doesn’t really hate Cocker Spaniels, and he plays bass in two bands.
