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.

The Sword of Shannara

Terry Brooks
Completed 2/9/2026, Reviewed 2/9/2026
2 stars

Ugh, what a slog!  This book was so derivative of Lord of the Rings that I couldn’t help myself from comparing the two through the whole read.  It was very overdramatic with almost no comic relief.  And while LOTR at least had three women characters, Shannara only had one, with a smaller role than Arwen.  I only liked three characters, a heroic and selfless dwarf, a rock troll, and a thief modeled after a character from The Prisoner of Zenda (per Wikipedia).  The book appears on a couple of “Best of..” lists.  My guess is because it was one of the first epic fantasy novels since LOTR to hit the mainstream, feeding the new generation of LOTR fans hungry for more of the same.  If I read it back when it was published in ’77, I might have liked it more.  But nearly fifty years later, it simply feels like sloppy fan fiction.  

Two diminutive brothers are visited by a strange Druid.  Allanon (whose pronunciation I could never divorce from the nearly identically spelled twelve step program) info dumps on the two that Shea is Flick’s adopted half-Elven brother.  Shea is the last of the Shannara line who can wield the Sword.  However, the Sword has been stolen by the evil and ancient Druid Brona.  Brona is trying to take over the world by pitting all the peoples against each other.  Shea must find the Sword and destroy Brona.  Along the way, he picks up his best friend and prince named Menion.  Flick also comes along.  They end up in a fellowship with a surly king named Balinor, a Dwarf named Hendel, and Elven brothers named Durin and Dayel.  They are chased by dark Skull Bearers, gnomes, and trolls.  Eventually they break apart.  Shea gets captured by gnomes and rescued by a thief and a rock troll.  They go off in search of the Sword.  The others go in search of Shea and to help defend the Southern Kingdom from Brona’s massive army of gnomes and trolls.  Oh yeah, there’s an outcast gnome that has an obsession with the Sword.

So yeah, it’s like Brooks took the plot points and characters of LOTR, threw in a sprinkling of Zenda, jumbled them in a sack, and pulled the elements out at random.  He did throw in a couple of other ideas, like the Sword being for good, not evil; the benevolent rock troll; a Siren; and a princess named Shirl in distress.  However, these could not distract me from obvious LOTR parallels.  

I never warmed up to most of the characters.  I did like Hendel the Dwarf.  He seemed like a caring, compassionate soul who went farther than the others in putting himself at risk for Shea.  I also liked Panamon Creel, the thief.  Despite being a tempestuous, one-handed trickster, he added some humor to Shea’s situation.  Keltset, his mute Rock Troll sidekick, was obviously a gentle giant with more secrets than any other character.  The best scenes were when Shea, Panamon, and Keltset were traveling together.  

Secrets was a big theme in this book.  Despite the myriad of expositions, Shea never fully understood the journey he was on.  Then he kept what he did learn from other characters like Flick and Panamon.  Allanon was big secret holder.  Balinor kept a lot to himself, particularly at the beginning of the book.  Everyone was afraid of telling everyone the whole truth about everything to spare each other feelings of fear or despair.  Reading all that was frustrating.  There would have been less trouble if people just told each other the truth.  

Brooks also used a common ploy to get more words down on the page by having each of the characters going over and over their situations in their heads.  Rather than add to the characterization, I found it tedious.  And the info dumps were mind numbing.  

I could not get my heart in this book.  It took me nearly two weeks to read this doorstopper.  The only thing I really liked were the five illustrations by the Brothers Hildebrandt.  I loved their LOTR calendars in the mid ‘70s and the coffee table books of their art.  While they perpetuated ideas that were never mentioned in the books, such as the hobbits’ feet being oversized, Balrogs having wings, and Aragorn being broad and bearded, it was just great that someone had such detailed renderings of the events in the trilogy.  So when this book appeared in bookstores with a Hildebrandt cover, I was intrigued.  I bought the book as a teenager, but never read it.  Having finally done so, I can tell my younger self, “You didn’t miss much.”  Two stars out of five.

Children of Time

Adrian Tchaikovsky
Completed 1/26/2026, Reviewed 1/26/2026
5 stars

This book blew my socks off.  This is excellent space science fiction without being a space opera.  In my mind, and in the definition from several sources, a space opera is piece of fiction set in outer space with a typically simplistic and melodramatic nature.  This was anything but simplistic or melodramatic.  This was high drama featuring the evolution of uplifted spiders and the frustrations of a colony ship looking for a final home for the human race.  Despite taking nearly two weeks to finish this 600-page doorstopper, I ate this up.  This book won the 2016 Arthur C. Clarke award.  

The book opens with a planet that has been terraformed for colonization by humans.  However, as an experiment, a ship is about to plant monkeys on the planet with a virus constructed to uplift the monkeys, that is, to make them evolve into sentient beings quickly, hopefully similar to humans.  As the last survivor of an accident with the ship, the mastermind of the experiment, Kern, escapes to a shuttle and uploads her brain into its computer and hibernates.  The shuttle, as it orbits the planet, sends messages down, awaiting a response from intelligent monkeys.  Several thousand years later a colony ship from Earth containing the last surviving half million humans approaches the planet.  However, the shuttle doesn’t let them land to protect her monkeys, forcing them to look elsewhere for a new home.  Thus begins a conflict with the shuttle and on board the colony ship.  Meanwhile, an unexpected species begins to evolve.  Spiders.

A long plot summary for a long book.  The third person narration alternates chapters between the Kern and the evolving spiders, and later, between the spiders and a classicist on the colony ship named Holsten.  This provides an amazing narrative following generations upon generations of spiders.  It initially follows one, named Portia and her descendants, also named Portia.  While sounding strange, it gives a sense of continuity to the story, despite being different spiders.  It also follows Bianca and eventually, Fabian, a male spider.  Each spider character changes as the evolution progresses but keeping the names consistent over time was a stroke of genius.  Their character development goes from simple primal survival to full on mature personhood in a bio-tech society.  Sure, spiders are creepy, but being inside their minds over the centuries induces amazing empathy.

As for the humans, Kern is a dangerous megalomaniac.  When she uploads her mind to the shuttle, the result is terrifying.  On the colony ship, Holsten provides continuity with the human past, which becomes useful for translating to the old Empire language of Kern.  Holsten is a gentle soul, one of the oldest members of the Key Core crew.  He observes as well as participates but always seems to pause to consider the humanity of a given situation and of the actions of his crewmates.  He provides a great counterpoint to the more A-type personalities of the other leaders of the ship.  Despite there being a captain, a lead engineer, a lead security officer, and a lead scientist, Holsten is the one who has more introspection as he bounces in and out of hibernation.  He’s basically the moral barometer of the remnants of the human race.

There are a lot of themes running through the narrations:  the cost of survival, the definition of sentience and of what we would call humanity, equality of the sexes, religion, war, and technology.  It’s chock full of interesting insights that the spiders have as they grow as a species.  And it’s an interesting reflection on the human civilization that destroyed Earth.  It’s powerfully presented without being preachy.  I was constantly amazed at how it all played out as the spiders evolved.

I give this book five stars out of five.  I loved everything about this book, from the style of prose to the amazing climax.  I approached it cautiously because I had heard nothing but glowing reviews from friends whose reviews I usually agree with.  This book has been on my TBR pile for a long time.  As I said in previous reviews of Tchaikovsky, I regret having waited so long to get to it.  Now I can’t wait to jump into the rest of the series.  If you’d like to check out a shorter Tchaikovsky novel first, do read Service Model.  It was one of my favorites from last year.  

Ariadne

Jennifer Saint
Completed 1/13/2026, Reviewed 1/16/2026
2 stars

I did not enjoy reading this book.  It suffered from the same issues as Heavenly Tyrant.  We spend way too much time in the main character’s head.  The book is almost all prosy descriptions of the internal struggle Ariadne experiences throughout her life.  And she repeats the same things over and over again.  Theseus is a savior, Theseus is a jerk, Dionysus is a savior, Dionysus is a jerk, my sister is self-absorbed, the Minotaur suffers, I suffer.  Over and over again.  This book is touted as a feminist retelling of the half-sister of the Minotaur and her relationship with Theseus and Dionysus.  To me there wasn’t much feminism.  I felt like she never had a self-actualizing moment and she always needed to have a man save her. 

Ariadne is the daughter of Minos.  Her beloved mother goes catatonic after giving birth to the Minotaur whom Minos eventually stashes away in a labyrinth, feeding him evil folks and Athenians.  Ariadne takes pity on the Minotaur, both having the same mother, but is still afraid of him.  She has a sister Phaedra who is boisterous and more outwardly self-centered.  The two are very close nonetheless.  When Theseus arrives as a sacrifice to the Minotaur, Ariadne plots with him to kill it and escape her raging abusive father.  However, Theseus abandons her on a deserted island and tricks Phaedra into marrying him, eventually becoming the King and Queen of Athens.  Dionysus saves her from death and they fall in love.  Phaedra falls in love with Theseus’ son from his rape of the leader of the Amazons.  And everyone wants revenge against everyone.  A very Greek tragedy.  

I wanted to stick pins in my eyes during the first hundred or so pages of this book.  Despite my love of Greek mythology, I found the events leading up to Theseus’ arrival mind numbing.  It is almost all told from Ariadne’s POV.  There are chapters from Phaedra’s POV as well, but they mostly come later.  We spend all that time in Ariadne’s head as she ruminates on the same things over and over.  The book got more interesting when narrated by Phaedra.  She’s much more action oriented and has much more stoic and go-getter personality.  Things happen in Phaedra’s chapters.  The action in Ariadne’s chapters are lost in the mental anguish and reflection prose.  I never felt connected to either one and had no empathy for their situations.  Yes, it was all terrible and mostly abusive or manipulative, but I felt like a third party watching from afar, not wanting to get close to this shit show.

Greek mythology is full of huge egos, manipulations, sexual violence and abuse, and misogyny.  But I felt it was done much better by Madelaine Miller in Circe.  Yes, you’re in the head of an abused and maligned woman, but you want to be there.  I so didn’t want to be in Ariadne’s head.  After reading about two-thirds of the book, I jumped onto Wikipedia to read up on the actual story to see how close it was following the original myth.  Of course, being mostly passed down orally, there are multiple versions.  But I got the gist of it.  This book does follow the myth, though I think the author could have done so much more with it.  Instead, it felt like a dry novelization.  

I give this book two stars out of five.  I was going to go a little higher, but after reflecting on it, I remembered how terribly bored I was by the prose.  Saint has written several books that retell Greek myth but I have no interest in following up on that.  Madeline Miller is much better at the retelling/reinterpretation game.  

My Roommate From Hell

Cale Dietrich
Completed 1/9/2026, Reviewed 1/12/2026
4 stars

This was a very cute, sweet, YA fantasy about first love as a freshman in college.  The twist is that the main character’s roommate is the Prince of Darkness.  Actually, he’s a prince from a parallel dimension where the inhabitants look like what we consider classic demons.  The sense is that visitors from this dimension over thousands of years have contributed to the collective idea of Hell and demons.  In this story, the roommate is part of an exchange program between the two dimensions to alleviate the misconception.  It’s complicated when the main character and the prince find themselves falling in love.  I didn’t see in my research if the author was influenced by Clarke’s “Childhood’s End,” but if he was, he took it in fun, eldritch directions.

When his mom drops Owen off at Pointe University, they are stunned to find out that his original roommate withdrew and Owen is now paired with Prince Zarmenus of Tartarus Beta, the parallel dimension, but commonly referred to as Hell.  Its inhabitants look like demons, although they can shape shift, and the dimension is full of fire, brimstone, rivers of lava, and eldritch horrors, just like the mythology of Christian Hell.  The university’s dean stresses the need for Owen and Zarmenus to get along to help with Earth/Hell relations.  She tells Owen that if he lasts out the semester exchange without incident, she will get him an internship at Google.  That highly motivates Owen and he agrees, only to find out that Zar is a spoiled, inconsiderate, and basically oblivious roommate.  Zar is also an extremely hot hunk.  Owen, on the other hand, is an intense, obsessive perfectionist who has never been on a date.  Navigating the situation is tough for Owen, made tougher by Zar’s suggestion that they pretend to be boyfriends to allay Zar’s royal, overbearing parents’ fears of failure in this exchange, as well as to convince the dean and the general populace that humans and demons can have a healthy relationship.  This forces Owen to question all his perfectionistic behavior and confront his fear of intimacy.  Hijinx ensue.

Yes, this is kind of a silly urban fantasy, but it deals with serious social awkwardness.  Owen has been focused on schoolwork his whole life, trying to do better than his parents and help them out financially.   Everything else is an irrelevant distraction.  His best friend Ashley is a classmate who was supposed to go to Pointe U with him but got pregnant and withdrew.  So now he’s alone and struggling to make friends.  Zar is a party boy.  He plays video games, never cleans his side of the room, and brings guys back to the room after dates while assuming Owen is asleep.  Without Ashley, Owen is lost.  Eventually, he does make some acquaintances.  Between them and through texts and calls with Ashley, he does finally confront Zar about his behavior.  The book is written in first person from Owen’s perspective.  So, we experience his struggle with conflict resolution, friend-making, and being in touch with his feelings.  And things become more complicated as he tries to deny his attraction to Zar and face his fear of pursuing what he wants.  

Then there are protests by fundamentalist extremist groups who can’t accept that the “demons” are simply beings from another dimension.  As usual, they fear what they don’t understand.  Additionally, they are followed around by the paparazzi who want photos and stories about this momentous college exchange program.  It’s bad enough that Owen is already an introvert, but this makes things even more uncomfortable.  Over time, though, he starts to enjoy his time with Zar despite the external pressures.  And of course, he has to face the fact that he is falling for Zar.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  It’s very angsty, Owen being a college freshman.  We spend a lot of time in his head full of cognitive dissonance, but it’s done well.  There is also dialogue, action, and plot.  The world building is decent, and the prose is not overly flowery.  If you’re over teen angst novels, this isn’t for you.  But if you like a sweet, college-aged romance between an spoiled prince and an introverted nerd, this will prove very satisfying.  There are no spicy scenes; it’s not that kind of book.  It’s an honest take on being a young adult in extraordinary circumstances.  

Penric and the Shaman

Lois McMaster Bujold
Completed 1/7/2026, Reviewed 1/8/2026
3 stars

This second book in the Penric and Desdemona series picks up four years after the events of Penric’s Demon.  I was rather disappointed.  I was looking forward to more interplay between Pen and Des as he learns to harness his sorcerer’s skills at the Academy as well as the evolution of communication between them.  I still liked the book but wasn’t ready for the jump in years.  

The book begins with Penric, now assigned to the Princess-Archdivine near the end of his training.  An investigator, aka a Locator, asks for the ear of the Princess.  He’s come for aid in finding a runaway shaman who has killed his best friend.  She assigns Penric and a few soldiers to Oswyl.  He questions Penric’s age and experience but acquiesces to the Princess’ wishes.  Together the posse discovers the spirits of people whose souls did not ascend to one of the five gods and the relationship between the shaman and ghosts.  Eventually, they find Inglis the shaman, but the truth about the circumstances of the death isn’t what they expected.  

The strange thing about this book is that the narrative jumps between Inglis, Penric, and Oswyl.  Each one is told in third person, so it is sometimes disruptive between sections.  This is different from the first book where it was all told in third person Penric.  I found the different narratives to be too similar to each other and was often confused about who we were following.  Within each narration, though, Bujold kept the mind frame of the character consistent.  For example, when Inglis and Penric finally meet, it is from Inglis’ POV and at first, like Inglis, we’re not sure who has entered the room until Penric introduces himself.  So small details like that were done well.  I just would have been appreciative if Bujold maybe titled the chapters with the name of the person whose POV was being told.  

Referring back again to the jump in years between stories, I was a little jolted by Penric’s gentle, generous, and controlled manner.  He’s clearly come to grips with being the vessel for a demon.  When he speaks, he sounds like a kind therapist.  Unfortunately, the banter with Des is mostly gone, so there’s very little sarcasm or inside jokes.  He occasionally addresses Des for guidance, but for the most part, Des is not a real player in this story.  

On the positive side, the story is good.  The plot is more structured with interesting things happening throughout the book.  The reader understands the journeys of the characters.  The world building is still terrific as we delve into the mechanics of shamanism in this universe.  As usual, the prose is terrific.  Keep an eye out for the amazing mega-dogs.  They’re pretty awesome.

I give this book three stars out of five.  Despite liking the story, I once again did not find it quite as engrossing as I wish it was.  I believe this series pre-dates cozy fantasy, but it does have that feel.  With the ghostly apparitions and the bloody knife (no spoilers 😊 ) however, it felt colder than most books I’ve read in the cozy subgenres.  Something still draws me to reading more of the series, so my little book club with JB will read the next two installments for the March selection.  

Penric’s Demon

Lois McMaster Bujold
Completed 1/5/2026, Reviewed 1/5/2026
3 stars

I liked this first in a long series of novellas by the author of the Vorkosigan series and the World of the Five Gods: Chalion series.  This series takes place in the latter’s universe.  Everything about it reminds me about Bujold’s prior prose and universe building.  It’s well-written and extremely detailed.  However, in this first volume, I felt that it was almost all world-building and very little plot.  While that was great for character development of Penric and his demon Desdemona, it lacked the punch to keep me engrossed. 

Penric is a nineteen-year-old who is on a journey to meet the young woman he’s betrothed to.  Along the way, he stops at what looks like a carriage accident.  Instead, he finds an older woman barely hanging on to life lying alongside the road with her entourage unsure of what to do.  He approaches her, hoping to offer help.  As she dies, a demon transfers itself from her to Penric.  Knocked out, he’s rushed to the next town only to find that the demon is from the 5th god, the Bastard, who is known mostly for disruption and chaos.  While recuperating and as the demon herself recuperates from the transfer, they start to learn about each other and the powers that Penric will obtain from her.  This leads to a plot by several people who believe that they are better qualified to be the vessel of the demon than Penric and the only way to transfer the demon again is to kill him.  

My biggest issue as I mentioned above is that most of the book is about Penric waiting around for some sort of instructions for getting the demon out or learning to live with it.  He’s barred from looking at the books he needs, particularly the ones written by the dead woman who it turned out was a sorceress herself.  They contain many things she learned over her life housing the demon within her.  However, he establishes a rather naïve rapport with the demon, calling it Desdemona after finding out she is actually comprised of about twelve demons.  Des is touched by Penric and becomes protective of him in return for his care for her/them.  It all sounds interesting in a few lines, but spread over many pages, it felt very slow paced.  

After a while, you feel like something has to happen before the end, and it does.  It’s somewhat exciting, but felt like an obligatory add-on to keep the reader engaged.  Despite feeling meh about Bujold’s decision to make this simply a discovery story, I kinda liked it.  I’ve very interested in the rest of the series.  I’m reading the first two in the series for a third book club I belong to.  It’s just me and a good friend reading SF and Fantasy series that may or may not have been started in on-line book club.  So I’ll probably get to the next couple of volumes in the near future.  I’m glad I am, because Penric is actually the first male main character I’ve liked by Bujold.  I did think he sounded younger than nineteen in his naïveté, but overall, he seems like a good kid.  I give this book three stars out of five.