The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Ratings86
Average rating4.5
4.50/5.00
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride is an excellent name for this book. Simply awesome. This book delivers a powerful punch and exceeds expectations for book 6 of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The authors fabricates a fun and innovative combat style in this book which is just pure fun. Like book 5, book 6 leans in the horror of this genocide committed by the villains. There are moments where I felt as hopeless as the crawlers. Matt Dinniman has finally managed to wrench the emotions from me that was always needed for this series.
The struggle between the mudskippers, the AI, the syndicate council, the faction teams and the crawlers is simply excellent and super fun. The ethical dilemmas in this book makes me pause and reconsider this book. Is this really just lit-RPG, or is it as deeply thematic as many science fictions stories? The book evokes anger and not just the genocide but the gleeful exploitation of the survivors. It also makes us think, can consumerism really take such a horrible path ? Is this a dramatic version of our future ?
Carl's character takes an important step ahead as the fellow crawlers recognize and admit the role he plays. He has become general Carl. I cannot wait to see the aliens get slaughtered in the next book. Princess Donut takes a step back in this book, which I am disappointed by, but its okay. I am torn as to what I want from the series. Is it better to stay in the dungeon and entertain ? Or is the political intrigue of the galaxy a better choice to quickly end the series. I am not sure. Based on the story so far, I believe we will spend several more books in the dungeon.
The plot for this book is top quality. Just excellent. So many unexpected twists and turns, so many hopeless moments mixed with moments of hope.
Now get out there and Kill! Kill! Kill!. This Cascadia needs to die a slow painful death.
Another whale-sized book, another read-through-the-night plot, more interesting characters and surprising twists. It's getting darker and sadder.
And the aliens' goings-on are taking up more of the pages. These my eyes glaze over, there are too many groups and members of those groups, too many mythologies, gods, demi gods, inferior gods that are sisters and wives of the same junior god. So confusing! I just slide over it and hope it doesn't trip me up somehow, later.
I'm caught up now. I think the latest book has just been released so I'll probably have to wait several years before the San Francisco library will let it out of there hands. I find it shocking that the nearest library that has this book in any format is on the other coastline from me!
It was quite good, but not quite as good as the last book. It did finish really strong though and I can't wait for the audio version of the next book to be out next month.
I've been binging this series in audio now for the past 2 months or so and I'm sad I'm not able to jump right into the next one.
The narration continues to be fantastic. I guess they are redoing the series as an audio drama with multiple narrators, but I'm good with just Jeff Hays. He's one of the best narrators I've listened to in quite some time.
This series is a lot of fun. The humor can be a bit sophomoric, which may turn off some folks, but it works pretty well for me.
If you haven't checked this series out yet and you like RPGs/heavy action fantasy series give this one a look.