Fergalicious, definition make them boys go loco. They want my treasure, so they get their pleasures from my photo. You could see me, you can’t squeeze me, I ain’t easy, I ain’t sleazy. I got reasons why I tease ’em, boys just come and go like seasons. Let’s blow up The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, by Matt Dinniman.
Synopsis:
Welcome to the Gun Show!
The top ten list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.
The Iron Tangle. An impossibly-complicated subway system built out of the world’s subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.
But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly-useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
Source: Goodreads
SPOILERS BELOW
The epic dungeon crawl continues as the Royal Court of Princess Donut (now consisting of Carl, Donut, Mordecai, and Katia) reach the fourth level. This floor is styled as a massive subway system, where crawlers have to navigate a confusing tangle of train lines, none of which seem to go exactly where the crawlers need to get to, and which are used by the monsters as well. It will take a lot of careful study and clever planning to figure out how to navigate the system to reach the exit without triggering a catastrophic disruption in the monster migration patterns that would have horrible consequences for everyone. Or, alternately, they could just blow everything up. One day, there will be a dungeon floor that does not conclude in a massive explosion; but today is not that day.
The dungeon layout was particularly interesting this time. The mechanics, as already mentioned, made it an intriguing puzzle to be solved; but it was also, as the crawlers eventually figured out, the alien equivalent of a racist political cartoon, with the Borant Corporation using the dungeon’s wide galactic viewership as an opportunity to unsubtly (to aliens familiar with the wider political situation) smear the character of some races they don’t get along with. And though the crawlers only get a few occasional glimpses of the wider political situation, it continues to impact their experience: Borant’s economic situation led them to increase the dungeon’s lethality and shorten the time limit on the levels so they could cash out quicker, which led to the AI distributing more and better loot to try and keep the power curve on track, which led to Borant overriding it on the quest reward it tried to give out at the end of the last book, which now has it feeling particularly spiteful towards its masters. The haste has also led to a breakdown in some systems, like the VIP protections for admins (which hasn’t had any serious consequences – yet), or the inventory controls in the production trailers crawlers go to before and after interviews (which led to Carl looting some high-tech machinery for his workshop). And nowhere is the idea of control breaking down more emphasized than with the titular Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook: a subversive item hacked into the game’s code by past rebels attempting to break the system, which lists all the secrets and exploits discovered by previous crawlers who dreamed of finding a way to burn the game down. It’s in Carl’s hands now; we’ll see if he can accomplish more with it than his predecessors.
But really, the highlight of this book is not Carl, but Katia. She gets a much-needed spotlight as she goes through a character arc of transforming from a timid temporary tag-along to the party to become a super-powered juggernaut who is accepted as a full-fledged permanent member of the team. It’s everything I hoped for when she was introduced in the previous book.
The “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret” bonus story features Growler Gary arriving at the under-construction Floor 17 death maze. Though he’s too drunk and grief-stricken to catch all the nuances of what’s going on, the story is establishing that the mobs are splitting into two factions: the believers, led by Rory, who buy into the promised reward of the Pineapple Cabaret in exchange for fulfilling their assigned duty; and the skeptics, led by Grandma Llama, who are certain that the system is going to once again screw them over, just like it always does.
Like the books before it, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook is exceptionally good.
Final Rating: 5/5
