Book Review 155
"The Butcher's Masquerade" by Matt Dinniman
5th book in "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series (book 1-4 was reviewed in Review 140, 149, 152, 154).
This book continue the DnD adventure set by aliens trying to make a show of their harvest of our planet and its main protagonist Carl. It is still not worse than the previous books, and I don't want to repeat myself from the past reviews.
DnD itself is dissolving onto second plan behind the protagonist's moral temptations and his plans to take over those cruel aliens, not just their made up game world.
New revelations, death of significant characters, new ordeals and new wins it have that all. Plus, some puzzles and plot lines from the previous books will be resolved (and new ones are emerged). You'll get some unexpected twists as well.
So the main message of this review is that if you liked books 1 and 2, you don't need to stop on them, books up to 5 are just as good. Plus, this is a really well-paced story.
According to the author, there should be 7-8 books in total (despite the fact, that it is mostly 1 book per dungeon level, and there should be more levels). He is not making an endless series out of it and not clumsily wrapping up all the plot lines because he became bored and would like to finish this story anyhow. The story steadily proceed to its resolution with enough secondary lines and twists to keep its reader excited and entertained.
Even though I prefer a more scientific Sci-Fi, this series is still one of the best I've read recently. It doesn't go too deep into technology background, but explaining just enough to make the world believable. So I am looking forward to read the 6th book (which should be published anytime soon) and upcoming ones as well.