Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

Matt Dinneman
Completed 3/22/2026, Reviewed 3/23/2026
4 stars

This is the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.  I enjoyed this book thoroughly.  However, it didn’t feel as original and exciting as the first book.  I expected that there would be a sort of sophomore slump with the second book.  These novels appeared online, similar to The Martian, and were published traditionally after developing a huge following.  So sophomore slump may be a misnomer.  Instead, maybe I can say that the author settled into a groove.  The story is still fast paced and exciting with a doomsday scenario for a climax.  But I know now it’s about settling in for the ride.

This book takes place on level three.  Everything is more challenging and there is much more room for getting killed.  Carl, still running around barefoot, in boxers and a one sleeved bomber jacket, is accompanied by Princess Donut, the talking cat, and her pet dino raptor, Mongo.  Because of the race and class Donut chose, their advisor, Mordecai, has become their manager.  Now they have much more information and guidance about the dungeon and their options.  In this book, they are sidetracked by side quests.  One involves a terrifying circus, another, the disappearance of sex workers.  There is still a lot of violence and gore, as one would expect in a DnD game, but also compassion exhibited by Carl and Donut towards the NPCs who were changed into terrifying clowns as well as the women who were forced into sex work.  Mordecai tries to keep the team from accepting these side quests, but their conscience gets the better of them.  Since they’ve leveled up, their stats are better and their weapons more effective.  But the scenario still requires the finesse of Carl and Donut to complete their quests without causing massive loss of life of the NPCs and the other crawlers.

This description makes the book sound more somber.  It really isn’t, as the first book was also full of moral questions Carl asks concerning the humans and the others who are dying in this game.  It is still a lot of fun but never loses sight of its humanity.  One of my favorite lines in the book is towards the end where Carl thinks, “And now that I had a moment to breath, my heart couldn’t stop pounding.  I found myself sitting on the bathroom floor, my hand to my chest.  How is this real?  How is this my life?”   So poignant!

The big character development here is with Princess Donut.  She becomes more aware of the moral issues involved and the reality of their situation.  She learns about caring for a pet with Mongo, who is an adorable menace, and helps Carl make tough decisions with a more humane perspective.  

Mordecai, on the other hand, remains somewhat of an enigma.  As an incubus, Mordecai can’t handle alcohol but goes on binges anyway.  He is very knowledgeable about the dungeon but carries the scars of having been a crawler himself.  He doesn’t make the best decisions for himself but does for Carl and Donut.  He gives them insight not only into the game, but also the galactic corporations who are controlling the strings and the effect Carl and Donut have on the media.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  The newness has worn off, but the enjoyment hasn’t.  I’m looking forward to seeing how Dinneman keeps the story fresh through all the dungeon levels.

Tough Guy

Rachel Reid
Completed 3/18/2026, Reviewed 3/18/2026
4 stars

This is the third book in the Game Changer series, aka Heated Rivalry.  This is also spicy M/M hockey romance.  I was initially worried I would find more of the same, but the plot is very different.  I was pleasantly surprised that I devoured this book in a matter of hours (a few last night, the rest this morning).  It’s a very sweet romance between a big, burly, anxiety-ridden ginger enforcer and his slender, makeup-wearing crush from when they were seventeen in a small town in Nova Scotia.  An enforcer is a defense player whose main job is to get into fights on the ice to protect his teammates.  It’s a toxic job and both characters struggle with its implications.

Ryan is the enforcer.  He’s a 6’7” bearded ginger who is kind of out, but really just doesn’t talk about it.  He is on heavy anti-anxiety and anti-depression meds which severely affect his sexual performance.  At the age of thirty-one, he has been traded almost annually between hockey teams.  The last trade was after a meltdown on the ice.  In his new team hometown of Toronto, he runs into the guy whose family he stayed with for a year during his junior career.  Fabian is the same age.  He’s almost the complete opposite, an indie musician and femboy who likes makeup and lacy things, trying to make ends meet working in a pharmacy.  Despite hating most of the junior hockey players who boarded with his family, Fabian had a huge crush on Ryan, who was quiet, polite, and friendly towards him.  When they run into each other all these years later, they can’t believe their eyes.  They exchange phone numbers, despite Ryan’s painful shyness.  After a few tentative texts and meetings, they let their old passions take over.  They are falling for each other, but both believe they are not right for each other.  Fabian hates hockey because of the toxic environment he grew up in, and because of the innate violence.  Ryan believes a man as beautiful as Fabian would never fall for a pathetically introverted oaf whose job is to beat up people.  Thus is the conflict that threatens their bourgeoning relationship.

The best aspect of this book is how the characters deal with mental illness.  This theme eventually ties into the mental health foundation that Shane and Ilya created in Heated Rivalry.  I was surprised and pleased to see it appear so prominently in this book.  Ryan is lovable and damaged.  There’s a beautiful scene on a plane to another game where his only friend among his teammates, Wyatt, talks him through his severe anxiety during takeoff and landing.  At the pharmacy, Fabian cues into Ryan’s anxiety and takes the lead in the mostly one-sided conversation.  It’s awkward, but also very sweet.  The scene makes you fall for both of them.  

I really liked how Reid came up with different plots for each book so far.  They’re similar in that there is some kind of conflict that may keep the two men apart.  Toxic masculinity in male team sports runs through all the books as well.  But the circumstances in each book are different enough to keep you turning the pages.  You can pooh-pooh this as romantic fluff, but the issues that the main characters deal with are very real and unique to the circumstances.  I give this book four stars out of five.  I could barely put it down and my heart was so warmed by the end.  Definitely a strong addition to the series.

Elatsoe

Darcie Little Badger
Completed 3/15/2026, Reviewed 3/16/2026
3 stars

This is the first book in the Elatsoe series.  Last year, I read Sheine Lende which is the prequel.  It won last year’s Lodestone Award, the YA novel award presented at the Hugo Ceremony.  Elatsoe was nominated for the 2021 Lodestone but didn’t win.  I thought Sheine Lende was the superior book, richer in world building and character development.  Elatsoe is good, but it wasn’t as rich in the history of the Lipan Apache.  It spent a lot of time recounting the main character’s six times great grandmother’s adventures.  It felt more like info dump than world building.  Still, for a first novel, it’s good.

Elatsoe, shortened to Ellie because people mispronounce her name, is a seventeen-year-old whose cousin Trevor was killed in a single vehicle crash under very suspicious circumstances.  Upon his death, she is visited by his spirit who reveals his murderer and begs her to bring him to justice.  She accedes, investigating the murderer with her bestie, Jay, and the support of her family.  Ellie can raise the spirits of animals from the Underworld, among other gifts.  Her dog is a raised spirit.  She’s very tempted to bring Trevor’s spirit back and is even urged to do so by his widow, but her parents warn her of the danger of the evil that comes back with the spirits of people.  What she uncovers about the murderer unlocks a huge mystery of magic and its abuse by the people in Trevor’s hometown.  She also learns more about her own gifts, her six-great-grandmother’s experience, and their relationships with the Underworld.

Ellie is a pretty cool character.  At seventeen, she’s torn between college and opening a private investigator business where she can use her gifts to help solve mysteries.  She’s smart, funny, and a very responsible teen.  She is asexual, not having any predilection for sexuality, which she declares to Jay.  She has a great relationship with her parents who support her in her exploration of her gifts while teaching her the lessons of her six-great.  There were times, however, when I felt she was a little too good to be true, almost a Mary Sue, with too few flaws and unrealistic cheeriness for a teen on the cusp of adulthood.  Still, it’s hard not to like her.  There’s one poignant scene in a rock souvenir shop where she exhibits her ability to deal with the prejudices of white people.  Again, a little too perfect of a behavior, but it does exhibit how she deals with racism.  

I also liked Jay.  He’s a descendant of the Fae.  He even has pointy ears that are usually covered by his hair.  The relationship between Jay and Ellie was sweet, if a little too sweet.  At their age, I think it would have been more realistic for Jay to have some feelings toward Ellie despite her orientation.  Instead, he’s relegated to a quasi-Gary Sue sidekick.

The overall tone of the book is rather cartoonish.  I rolled my eyes at some of the dialogue because of the language used.  I really bristled when one of the bad guys refers to the “meddling kids.”  That was just too banal for the generations who grew up with Scooby Doo.  It betrays the build-up of tension and makes the confrontation with the evil seem extreme and out of place.  Sheine Lende was also a YA novel, but it worked more effectively from this perspective.

My favorite part of the book was her ability to call to the spirits of animals.  There’s a particularly wild scene with swarms of trilobites.  And who wouldn’t love a ghost mammoth.  No spoilers 😉 It also explores her relationship with the Underworld and compares and contrasts it with her six-great, who was the most skilled wielder of magic in her family history.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It was a little too juvenile for a book about seventeen-year-olds dealing with mortal danger.  It’s an enjoyable, easy read despite the gruesome climax.  It’s worth reading for context for its prequel, although they can both stand alone.  I do like this alternate-Texas that Little Bear created and am interested in what her future books will explore.

The Spear Cuts Through Water

Simon Jimenez
Completed 3/12/2026, Reviewed 3/12/2026
5 stars

This is a very complex novel, both in form and story telling style.  It is a story within a story within a story.  It changes between first, second, and third person at the drop of a hat.  The prose is lush and stylistic.  All that combined would usually turn me off a book.  I don’t mind making an effort to read a complex book, but sometimes it’s too much and I can’t remain in the headspace to get everything out of it.  With this book, I found it a compelling challenge that I wanted to conquer.  I was rewarded with a superb tale that kept me driven to finish.  This book won the 2023 Robert Holdstock Award which is the British Fantasy Society award for Fantasy (there is a separate BFS award for Horror).  

The main plot is about two teens, Jun and Keema.  Jun is the grandson of the Emperor.  His father and uncles are known as the Terrors.  They are cruel and sadistic.  Jun was in the Red Peacock army of his father and had a red peacock tattooed on his face.  He now has to cover his face with a mask to avoid being associated with his father’s evil army.  He is on a mission to get his grandmother, the Moon Goddess, to the sea so that she can break the curse of the turtle communication system and bring down the Emperor.  By chance of fate, he meets Keema, a one-armed teen and last survivor of the Daware tribe.  He promised his captain that he will deliver her Spear to the mysterious Shan who lives by the sea.  They work together on their missions with the primary goal of helping the Goddess bring down the Emperor and his sons and free the nation.  

This story line is told on the stage of the Inverted Theater, a place out of time, attended by shadows and one living human, the subject of the second person narration.  That person has transcended into this other dimension while being told the story by lola, their grandmother who keeps the story of their lineage and the mystery of their family’s possession of the Spear.  It takes a lot of effort to figure out that this is what’s happening.  Second person narration always throws me for a loop.  Then, when mixed with the third person telling of the story of Jun and Keema, and with first person comments from a myriad of major and minor characters, it makes for an extremely complicated book.  Yet, within the first fifty pages, I got the form figured out and was able to read the rest with minimal confusion.  The only remaining piece of complexity was the prose.  It is very lush, not just with the description and world building, but also with the movement of the plot.  There were times I missed key details and connections and regularly had to go back and reread a page or two.  

It took a while to warm up to both Jun and Keema.  They are young and carry an annoying false bravado.  They often got into fist fights, grappling, and wrestling over differences of opinion.  However, through this behavior coupled with the intense journey they are on together, they slowly fall in love.  It is new to both and they deny their feelings, mostly notably Jun who does not believe he is worthy of love after the atrocities he committed as a Red Peacock.  

One of the more interesting ideas in this book is the turtle communication network.  Long ago, the Moon Goddess “gifted” turtles with the ability to communicate with each other telepathically.  The emperors used this network for the spreading of news but also exploited it as a spy network.  The turtles can speak to humans as well and have an empathic ability to sense what is going on inside people.  I found this to be very unique and creative, a sort of ansible for fantasy.

This book is not for everyone.  It is a difficult read, requiring attention and patience.  If you go into it knowing this, it will help you understand what’s going on quickly.  If you need a straightforward narrative, this is not the book for you.  I found the world building astounding and the prose simply delicious.  After getting used to bopping between the narrative voices, I had no trouble following it.  In fact, when it jumped back to second person and lola’s storytelling scenes, it was a nice break from the intensity of the action in the Jun and Keema narrative.  This book should have been shortlisted for more awards, but I can see how its complexity may have put off some readers and nominating committees.  Leave it to the British to embrace such a magnificent, well-crafted, complicated book.  I give it five stars out of five.  

Heated Rivalry

Rachel Reid
Completed 3/5/2026, Reviewed 3/9/2026
4 stars

Well, between Game Changer and this book, I watched the Heated Rivalry series.  So I had a lot of images already in my head, regardless of the fact that Ilya is described differently in the book (dark and hairy vs. blond and smooth).  My impression of the book was skewed by this.  I liked it much more than Game Changer, mostly because it shed a lot more light on the internal conflicts of the Ilya and Shane as their relationship progressed.  Despite the overuse of adverbs, I think this is the better novel.  I think the character arcs were stronger because of their inner dialogues.  Yes, the spicy content is as good as Changer.  And yes, I will continue to read this series.  And just to be clear, I was a hockey fan before the series 😊 from the early days of the Colorado Avalanche when I was living in Denver, with a nod to the Jersey Devils rubbed off from my hockey playing brothers.  

Since the series has become one of the most watched in recent history, with one of the episodes being the most watched ever, a plot summary seems moot, but here it goes.  Ilya is a Russian prospect for the NHL.  Shane is a Canadian prospect.  They meet at a junior championship match where they hook up.  They are drafted by two different teams and become the two hottest players in the NHL, and bitter rivals on the ice.  However, their hook ups continue when they play in the same city.  Eventually, their relationship becomes an obsession, hiding their true feelings for each other.  Both are afraid of their feelings and the repercussions if their story leaks.  Ilya, who is bisexual, has never felt this way with anyone before.  He also carries the weight of his exceedingly critical father and the financial demands of his brother and stepmother.  Shane struggles accepting that he is gay, and fears coming out to his hockey-crazed domineering mother.  So they try to find ways to hide their feelings and relationship until Scott and Kip from the previous book have their infamous kiss on the ice after Scott wins the championship cup.  And the floodgates of feelings are breached.

As I said above, it’s hard to separate this book from the series.  My biggest observation is that we see more of the internal struggles of Ilya and Shane, with neither wanting to admit they have fallen in love with each other.  This helped a lot, particularly with Ilya, who constantly throws barbs and sarcasm around as a way to hide his true feelings.  The series made him out to be more of a jerk in the first few episodes compared to the book’s first half.  His internal dialogue softened that behavior, making me more empathetic toward him.  Shane, in comparison, was vulnerable in both media.  

I don’t have much else to say about the book.  I thoroughly enjoyed it, though it took me a while to finish it, trying to read it while on the fun- and activity-filled Star Trek Cruise.  I do have the next couple of books in the series, so I’ll be getting to those soon after catching up on my genre fiction TBR and book club lists.  I give this book four stars out of five.  

Guess What? I Love You

Mike Maimone
Completed 2/21/2026, Reviewed 2/21/2026
5 stars

I discovered Mike Maimone on social media.  Clips of his music began showing up in my feeds, probably because I tend to view videos by gay musicians.  Mike was very different, with a gravelly Dr. John kind of voice and a distinctive blues/jazz/ballad fusion style.  With all those slashes, you can probably say he transcends styles.  I began following him and learned more about where he is in his life.  He is a widower, having lost his husband and soul mate from an aggressive form of leukemia less than a year after they met.  However, in that time, they both discovered they had found true love.  This book is Mike’s memoir of their relationship.

After more than ten albums, many as part of a band, Mike was going solo.  He was a single man trying the gay dating apps after two unsuccessful relationships.  This year was going to be different, it was going to be the year of saying “Yes,” opening himself to new experiences.  One night, he gets a hit on an app, an older man who was Mike’s type.  They began chatting long distance as Mike was working in Nashville and Howard was in LA.  Something clicked and they hit it off online.  When they finally met, it clicked again.  Soon Mike was falling head over heels for Howard.  They quickly began planning visits whenever their schedules allowed.  Then came talk of a long-term relationship.  On the next trip, Mike planned to propose to Howard when he got the call that Howard was very sick. 

I have not read many memoirs in the last twenty years, not since the days of David Sedaris and Augustin Burroughs.  Unlike those, this book is like a journal of finding the love of your life and then being devastated by loss of him in less than a year.  Mike is brutally honest about how they came to fall in love despite their many differences.  It’s filled with excitement, anxiousness, self-doubt, and humor.  Then he holds back nothing as he experiences the stages of grief during Howard’s short illness.  

My reaction to this book was instant love.  As a gay man myself, I could completely relate to those early stages of discovery in a relationship, where everything is new and exciting and sexy.  And having lived through a devastating breakup and more recently, the sudden loss of a close friend, his story hit me hard.  I read most of this book on a plane ride from Portland to Orlando for the Star Trek Cruise.  Despite my excitement of my trip and the distractions of a plane ride, I found myself immersed in Mike’s experience, my eyes leaking until we came in for our landing.  

This is a deeply personal account of love and loss.  You don’t have to be gay to get it.  The emotions transcend orientation.  And if the book wasn’t enough, Mike also released a companion album.  I don’t have any music apps, but I’ve listened to many clips, and the songs are just as gorgeous as this book. (This may be the push I need to get one so I can listen to the whole album uninterrupted).  I’ll probably never be able to look at a butterfly again without thinking about Mike and Howard.  I give this book five stars out of five.  

Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman
Completed 2/17/2026, Reviewed 2/18/2026
5 stars

This book was a hoot and a half.  It’s LitRPG, a hybrid genre of science fiction and/or fantasy with the mechanics of a role-playing game, like Dungeons and Dragons, where the characters are aware they are in an RPG.  It has quests, battles, loot, managing stats and inventory, and leveling up.  Being relatively new to DnD (only been playing consistently for two years) and never having read LitRPG before, I thoroughly enjoyed this.  It is a little cartoonish at times, but the main character has a well-developed character questioning the morality of the situation he is in.  It also has a snarky talking cat.  How can you not love that?

In the middle of the night, Coast Guard veteran Carl goes outside to fetch his possibly soon-to-be ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning cat, Princess Donut, which is up a tree.  Suddenly, every building within sight collapses into a pancake.  Only people who were outside at the time of the collapse survived.  The two enter a stairwell down which takes them into a dungeon, complete with exploding goblins, maniacal llamas, and goo slugs.  They find out they are in an RPG game along with all the other survivors of Earth.  It’s run by aliens and broadcast throughout the galaxy to trillions of viewers.  But this reality game show has a twist: when players die, they really die.  And if anyone survives all the way to level 18, that person will inherit the Earth.

While this book is really fun, it’s also quite gruesome.  Yeah, there’s gore, but the really unsettling part is that players die by the millions.  Also, some of the monsters were originally humans or aliens from a previous season.  There’s one particularly rough scene where Carl and Princess Donut are trying to kill a particularly horrifying and dangerous monster when Carl realizes it’s a woman begging for her life in Spanish.  At one point Carl and Donut come across a group of people from a senior nursing home who survived the apocalypse because their home was on fire.  They join the home’s four employees in trying to keep them alive until they can level up in level 3 and gain some powers.  I was surprised and impressed by these scenes.  Dinniman did a great job of integrating Carl’s morality into his situation.  It’s not just any action-adventure story.  It has heart.  Specifically, Carl has heart.

Princess Donut is also great.  Rather than just being categorized as a pet to Carl’s character, she gains the ability to speak, as well as special powers.  She becomes a playing character.  Dinniman keeps Donut in the mindset of a cat while still acquiring some human emotion.  She has many funny scenes in dialogue with Carl, namely whenever she references other men who come over when Carl is at work and moan and growl with his girlfriend behind closed doors.  She has no idea that she’s making Carl more miserable than the potentially fatal RPG situation he’s in.  

Another funny and gut-wrenching scene is when the two are pulled out for interviews, just like the behind the scenes interviews on shows like Survivor and American Idol.  While funny, they give Carl more opportunity to feel icky about his task at hand, i.e., killing to survive.  Note that there are a lot of funny scenes, but this aspect of Carl’s personality makes him much more three dimensional than your average action hero.

I’m going with five stars out of five on this book, only because it is so original to me, and as a DnD player, I could immerse myself in the story and into Carl’s character.  The action is fast paced, the writing is very readable, and the world building is marvelous.  Friends had been telling me I had to read this series.  I’m glad I finally did, even though it was for my online book club.  Now I’ve got to figure out how to fit the next seven books in the series into my ever-expanding TBR list.