/lit/ - Literature

>>22233483
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride, Dungeon Crawler #6 - Matt Dinniman (2023)

Wow, so much happens. This may be my favorite of the series thus far. It's also the longest book yet, listed at ~700 pages for the Kindle edition. Surprisingly I didn't mind the length at all, though what constitutes filler will vary by reader. After the opening recap and prologue, the first few chapters are mostly about going through rewards, achievements, processing what happened from the end of the previous book, and talking over about what the current floor will be about. The story didn't seem to really begin until the 5th chapter and by that point it's already at 10%, so roughly 70 pages. Turns out I didn't mind all the preparatory material. The story continuously goes all over the place, but it's a fun wild ride and I wouldn't have it be any other way.

The background setting for the floor is the real world and there's an explicit focus on folklore, particularly of the cryptozoological sort, though the aliens corrupt a lot of it. There's also various religious sorts included as well. As you may have noticed, there's an Uzi Jesus on the cover. The depiction of Jesus may be offensive to some readers, because Dinniman doesn't hold back. Personally, I found it hilarious in how absurd it was all.

As also shown on the cover, the primary mechanic this time is explicitly stated to be an active time battle version of Pokémon combined with Yu-Gi-Oh. It's quite something, especially their summoning intros and quips. Does it make any sense? No. Is it entirely broken in terms of fairness and balance? Yes. Sometimes they just kill their opponent before a card/trainer match can initiate. Everyone knows how silly it is though and that's part of the fun. The fun is what matters the most for me.

There's considerably more focus on the space opera and events outside of the dungeon in general. I wouldn't be surprised that at the end of the next book the space opera becomes the primary narrative and the dungeon becomes the background. I'm withholding judgment on that because the dungeon is what's so fun about it and while I certainly enjoy space opera, I don't know that that's what I want from this. The space opera could end up being an extremely amusing black comedy though and I wouldn't mind that at all.

Rating: 4.5/5 (tentatively rounded up to 5)