I just polished off
The Gate of the Feral Gods, the fourth book of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, and I'm happy about how it seems to be a return to form for the series.
Mostly.
I kind of outsmarted myself here, having picked this one up in ebook format at the same time as the
previous book in the series, which means that I missed out on the "Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret" novella tidbit for this book as well. Given that I still haven't gotten the print copy (which is the only place said novella can be found) of the third book from the library, I'm starting to wonder if it's better to just give up on the novella altogether; reserving and waiting to pick up multiple books just for a few pages of original content seems like overkill.
But I digress. Dinniman seems to have restrained his inclination to indulge in the particulars of the absurd nature of the next dungeon floor. Said particulars are still to be found, of course—"restrained" is a far cry from "abandoned"—but they don't seem to dominate the story the way that they did before. There's more focus on the characters, as well as how they're making use of what they have to solve the situations they find themselves in, and I think the story is stronger for it. It helps that the various plot threads laid down before are starting to come together in satisfying ways, even as more are laid down. Plus the ending packed quite a wallop, in a very good way.
So yeah, I'm still enjoying the series, to the point where I'm eager to find out where it goes from here.
