This Inevitable Ruin (by Matt Dinniman)

This is the seventh book in the series and I am now on book eight but I am also back to work so assume I will be finishing these a bit more slowly now. (Also, I swear I am reading other things - I have two more books in progress, they just take longer than these propulsive, candy-like books.)

Book seven was a particularly good one, with huge emotional stakes as well as the trademark humor of the series. I don't have much new to say since I've already blogged about this series twice and this is the seventh book I've read! Except to assure you that I do know other books exist.  

Candy!  

 

Dungeon Crawler Carl (The Next Three) (by Matt Dinniman)

The next three books in the series were #4, #5 and #6, The Gate of the Feral Gods, The Butcher's Masquerade and The Eye of the Bedlam Bride.  They definitely all start to blend together after a while (as evidenced by the fact that I had to revise this post because I forgot #4) but I do know I enjoyed both 5 and 5, as the lore of the world keeps expanding.   (And the books keep lengthening; I just started the next one and it's like 850 pages long.  Dinniman has also started putting in recap chapters at the beginning to help keep track of everything. It's a lot.) 

So far my least favorite has still been number four because I didn't love the setup of the dungeon level very much.  I enjoyed five and six although with Bedlam Bride, I found the card mechanic a little confusing.  And Dinniman is starting to overly rely on the "flashback to fill in what you missed" technique which is confusing because I can't keep track of what he's mentioned and what he hasn't mentioned. (I'm using the "look up in book" feature on my Kindle a lot.)

Still, the humor and characters and Princess Donuttyness of it all continues to make for a fun reading experience.  Princess Posse 4 Life. 

The Black Unicorn (by Audre Lorde)

This is a collection of poems by Audre Lorde, who was a librarian, thus fulfilling the "Read a book by a librarian" category of the RHC.

I respect Audre Lorde tremendously, and there are some moving poems here - in addition to strong themes of Black (and queer) womanhood, the African pantheon, and brutality against Black Americans. But on the whole, I have to say her work is more abstract than I prefer. I am a visual person, and I like poetry with more concrete imagery than is offered here.  

I feel the same way about Amanda Gorman, to be honest. Too much abstract, not enough concrete.  Sorry Audre and Amanda; it's not you, it's me.  

Dungeon Crawler Carl (The First Three) (by Matt Dinniman)

My friend group (with whom I play tabletop games and RPGs) has all been devouring this series and insisting that I need to read it because it is my type of humor and also Princess Donut (the cat) reminds everyone of me.  Now that I know how magical Princess Donut is, I take this as a profound compliment.

I was also told to read it as an audiobook since it has an amazing narrator, and that's what I did for the first one, which allowed me to check off the 2015 RHC category of "an audiobook" and thus "pick a challenge from any of the previous years’ challenges to repeat."  I didn't love the choice for Carl's voice and audio isn't fast enough for me, so I switched to downloading books in text format. It took me less than a day to read book two and about another day to read book three. I need to slow down.

As you might imagine, it is in fact propulsive and very entertaining. The humor is very juvenile and there's some problematic elements; you can definitely tell a guy wrote this. The way fat female bodies are repeatedly described as monstrous isn't amazing. But there is enough delightful worldbuilding, action, humor, and heart to keep me wanting to read on. Just be forewarned. 

Also it's pretty gory because there's a lot of monster-killing and creative murder. So be forewarned! But as you can tell, it's also very addictive.