We’ve made it to the ninth floor, and that means Faction Wars! This is something that Carl and Donut have been looking forward to (well, sorta, you know what I mean). Usually, the ninth floor is all about the rich tourists who come in and fight each other for bragging rights. They force the crawlers into fighting for them, too, using them as cannon fodder. But not this time, this time Carl and Donut’s fans have managed to buy their way into the game and have named Carl and Donut as the warlords of their army. Finally, the crawlers have a chance to turn the tables. But that’s not all, because thousands of former crawlers have come to join the current crawlers in Faction Wars. And the sentient NPCs have created a team of their own, too! And something really weird is going on with the dungeon AI. Things are about to get really messy in Dungeon Crawler Carl Book Seven: This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman.
[Warning: My review of This Inevitable Ruin contains some spoilers!]
Oh my god, they made it!
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride ends with a crazy plan from Carl to try to save everyone and bring them to the next floor. Basically, he found a loophole in the way the floor design worked and used a giant demon to exploit it. He wasn’t sure it was going to work, but he told all the crawlers he could about it, and apparently, a whole awful lot listened because they made it to the ninth floor with a huge army of crawlers, most of them more than happy to fight in the Princess Posse army.
Carl is happy about how many crawlers have made it, but he knows that the numbers are still astronomically against them. Then he gets a shock. Turns out that some of the old authors of the Anarchist Cookbook have banded together outside of the dungeon and have decided to join up with the Princess Posse to take down the system. And they’ve brought friends! Over 50,000 former crawlers have come to join Faction Wars on Donut and Carl’s behalf. It’s enough to bring Carl to tears, but that also means it’s time to get to work because there are even more people counting on him!
Never-ending problems
So, at this point, we’re used to the overwhelming number of obligations that Carl and Donut are trying to balance. It hasn’t really been a matter of “just” survival since they met the Meadow Lark crew way back on the first floor. They’ve been juggling their own needs with helping as many fellow crawlers as they can while the AI hits them with one quest after another.
Factions Wars is no different. They’re trying to win the war, but they’re also aware that they need a plan to let both the Princess Posse and the NPCs win. The last thing Carl wants to do is betray his friends, even the “not real” ones.
At the same time, there’s the whole problem of the Crown of the Sepsis Whore dangling over their heads. Because of a cursed object, only Donut or Katia can leave the ninth floor; the other has to die. Of course, neither is going to hurt the other, so they have to find a workaround. Katia has a magical flower she can eat that might let her leave, but Carl and Donut are worried about her safety once she’s gone and are hoping for a different answer. But they’re running out of time.
Carl also has the Bedlam Bride stuck inside him, and if she doesn’t get out soon, she might take him over. And that won’t be good for anyone. Oh, and Carl has that quest from Embrerus to find out who killed his son and to kill his brother (but then he’s going to kill Carl for killing his brother).
Oh, and the Syndicate is trying to regain control of the dungeon (and the entire system, maybe even the whole universe, no one is sure at this point) from the AI, but the AI is completely out of control. That sounds like it would be good for the crawlers, but the AI doesn’t quite seem to be all there if you know what I mean, sooooo it might be good for them, but it might not be.
Basically, what I’m saying is it’s just another day in the dungeon for Carl and Donut.
Ever deeper emotions in This Inevitable Ruin
As our heroes travel deeper and deeper into the dungeon, we keep getting more intimate looks at their pasts and how they affect their present. In This Inevitable Ruin, we get to see some of what has shaped Katia. We’ve known for a while now that she tried to adopt before the collapse, but something happened, and she was unable to. Now we get the full story of what happened, and yes, it’s heartbreaking. It really puts into perspective what happened back in The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook when Eva taunted her, and Katia lost it. It also helps us to understand the decision she ultimately makes at the end of The Inevitable Ruin. Katia is a great character who grows so much over the course of the dungeon. I know her story isn’t done yet, and I can’t wait to see what she manages to do when we next see her.
We also see just how much of a toll the dungeon is taking on Carl and Donut. Carl openly breaks down and cries a few times in This Inevitable Ruin. The weight of all the crawlers, depending on him, is slowly crushing him. His fear that he will turn into his father doesn’t help. The dungeon is a cruel place, and sometimes you have to do horrible things to survive. But every time Carl has to betray his ideals, it tears a little bit of his soul away. He tries to hide it, but some of the scars are getting too deep to hide. The one thing keeping him grounded is Donut. We knew this already, but by the end of the seventh book, everyone knows just how important she is to him. Whether that’s a good thing remains to be seen…
Donut is also showing signs of battle fatigue. She has been the stereotype of a pampered brat for much of the series. But if you’re paying attention, you realize that much of it is an act she puts on. There are signs of her good heart if you look for them. Still, she doesn’t seem to have much of a problem killing enemies. However, by the end of this book, we see that it is starting to affect her, too. There’s only so much that you can take before you break. Carl won’t let the dungeon break him. Will Donut?
A larger scope as the story grows
Back in Dungeon Crawler, Carl, the story’s focus was on a guy and his ex-girlfriend’s cat trying to survive. There were hints way back then of a deeper story (Agatha was always suspicious), but it was pretty much those two bumbling around trying not to die. But now, seven books in, there’s so much more than them trying to survive. Dinniman has turned their survival story into a universal survival story. At this point, if anything happens to Carl or Donut, the rest of us are screwed. So we’d better hope they can figure out how to land this plane without a runway, or radar, or landing gear, or, oh, you get my point! It might be a disaster but you can’t look away, find out for yourself when you read This Inevitable Ruin.
Rating: 9/10
This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman is available now!
Learn more about the book on the official website.
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