💣💣💣 3/5 Explosives – Not as good as the first book, but still plenty of fun.
Format: Audio (Audible)
Read: June 2026
I enjoyed the second book in this series, though I don’t think it was as strong as the first one.
Carl and Donut reach the third level of the dungeon, which has a creepy nightmare circus theme. They get to pick a new race and class for themselves, and I was surprised how invested in that I was – even though I knew Donut would stay as a cat and Carl would at least still look human (the book covers give this away!). All crawlers are Level 3, get to do this, so things get a little bit wackier with players changing into all manner of different creatures.
I did start to notice Carl’s unbelievable ability to take huge leaps in logic, risk everything on it and turn out to be right. He’s a bit too good at everything. How does he know so much about the storylines of TV shows and video games, ones written by aliens, too? He guesses a whole plot line for two quests and is ultimately correct both times. I might be ok with this if it were ever explained how he’s so good at this. Or maybe this is him getting special favours from the game’s AI? At this point, it’s not clear, and it’s starting to niggle me.
The “Murdered prostitutes rain from the sky” quest is in extremely poor taste. In our real world, sex workers have been treated as disposable victims basically forever, and here we again have their corpses used as very literal set dressing. I know the whole game world is poor taste, but Dinniman only makes the most half-arsed point about it, which doesn’t justify writing this plot. We get two brief NPC characters who are meant to humanise the sex workers and remind us that the NPCs are real living beings, but they both end up dead, and it doesn’t really land for me. I was glad when that portion of the story was over.
That particular quest wasn’t done well, but we do learn a little bit more about the wider universe, and Carl comes to understand further that the NPCs are victims of the dungeon world as much as the crawlers are, and that many of them (like Mordecai) used to be crawlers who are still trapped in a different – perhaps even worse – kind of hell. Carl also learns that there can be real outside world consequences for things that happen inside the dungeon, and that there is a complicated system of politics and corporate interests that are outside of his sphere of knowledge and control. It is these elements that keep me interested in this world.
My favourite thing about this second book was Donut’s growth. As a newly sentient cat, she’s very childlike, but by Level 3, she’s starting to learn and mature, and Carl starts to think she’s not as simple as she plays for the cameras. I also really love that Mordecai takes on a new role that (hopefully) means he gets to stick around in the party more long term!
Their little party gains another new member in Katia, a member of Brynhild’s Daughters whom they take in at Hekla’s request. Katia is very timid and nervous, with an interesting doppelganger class. She is a contrast to the large personalities of Carl and Donut, and the question hanging over Hekla’s motives provides some higher-stakes intrigue for the next book!
It’s still fun, and I’m into the next one. These books have been great to motivate me to do more cleaning around the house!
For Law of Fives, this is the second book in a series.
REVIEW SUMMARY
I LIKED
- The audiobook is brilliantly entertaining.
- Donut’s growth.
- Surprisingly invested in what game race and class people pick!
I DIDN’T LIKE
- Dead sex workers as props and set dressing.
- Carl is turning out to be a bit of a Gary Sue… but maybe that is going somewhere?!
