Dungeon Crawl Carl is still going pretty strong in book 4. Carl, along with Donut, and a few others are on floor 5, which seemingly requires a bit of teamwork or at least coordination between groups. It really takes a while for the story to get going, maybe a little too much time doing some scene setting that just doesn’t seem that necessary. The probably haunted buried temple thing likewise has some good potential that really doesn’t get developed. The flying gnomes and the camel folk who are not all what they seem are not really interesting enough to take up half of an almost 600-page book. Some additional crew members, the loss and then regain of Zev, and the additional deity options keep things interesting though. The possessed sex-doll head is just weird though, and it doesn’t help that the next chapter of the Pineapple Cabaret that features weird rodents getting horny. It’s just not necessary for any visible reason, and it’s not even that funny. The doll head could be, but that bit gets rushed a little too much. Also, it’s been too long since we’ve seen Odette.
The cookbook plays more of a role now and that at least is interesting in some suspense and world building, and Katia finally gets some confidence which is nice. The conclusion also definitely continues some set up that I’ve kind of been suspecting for a while, but now it’s getting more visible, and this is probably what saves this part of the story in the end. Also, wrapping up the Maggie saga which also helps solve the ‘where’s Chris’ question gets what feels like a distraction again out of the way. And ok, the cheap (and exploding) merch Donut and Carl are supposedly testing is actually kind of funny. As usual, it’ll be interesting to see what the next challenge actually looks like, even though we already kind of know what the next floor supposedly is.
