Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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Closing Some Doors, Some Still Open

This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

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Capture the flag is now the name of the game in This Inevitable Ruin aka Dungeon Crawl Carl 7, or really more like capture the enemy castles and hold the throne rooms, and probably also kill all members of the enemy group. This is also the Faction Wars part, meaning that some of the other teams actually are from outside the dungeon, and are paying to participate. A lot of the outside groups are now eligible to directly participate, and several do. There’s an interesting […]

A Pokemon-Magic-Yugi-Oh Mishmash

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman

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The Eye of the Bedlam Bride one the one hand takes on the geek card game as its general dungeon challenge (it’s a cross between Magic the Gathering and Yugi-Oh, with a hint of morbid Pokemon, kinda), and on the other it’s set on sort of a ghost Earth, making it a chance for some significant backstory as well as possible foreshadowing. If it wasn’t clear already, the game-master AI is also becoming more of an element of the story, which could both be the […]

Past and Future and Side stories

The Butcher's Masquerade by Matt Dinniman

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It took me a little while to get into Dungeon Crawl Carl 5, The Butcher’s Masquerade, but once it gets going, it’s the usual action/snark/Carl-Donut-crew etc. I think part of the challenge for me, besides just general life getting in the way for a while, was that the title event really doesn’t become a factor until 2/3 of the way through, and it’s an interesting premise. Even the Hunting Grounds aspect of the current floor doesn’t seem to matter much. Carl being forced to do […]

Talking Donuts Explode

The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman

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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 […]

Side Quest Central

Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

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Carl’s Doomsday Scenario is a pretty good continuation of the Carl and Donut dungeon crawl. The characters and seat of the pants problem solving are still there, the dark humor that’s both tragic and still entertaining is still there. Plot-wise this volume gets thin; much like the side quest emphasis (new feature of this volume), there is not a lot of progress in the main overall situation. There’s also isn’t  a ton of character development beyond the “game character” that everyone has to perform to […]



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