Summary: Kill.  Then Survive.  That’s it. And you know that’s it if you’ve been keeping up with the books. Oh, and break the Dungeon; there’s that, too.

There’s a little prelude that shows us what happened on Odette’s and Mordecai’s crawl that made him hate her so much.  That was much appreciated.

Carl and Donut are on the 8^th floor now.  The floor has three phases.  In the first phase, each squad of crawlers is segregated to the area (a facsimile of an Earth environment) which they chose at the end of the last floor.  Each squad has an additional six possible ‘spots’ to add to their squad which they can do by fighting and then ‘claiming’ a monster which will then work/fight for them.  It’s sort of a cross between Pokeman and Tarot cards.  In subsequent phases, there will be bad guy squads who are also out there adding monsters to their ‘hand.’  And there will be awful battles.

Honestly, there are hundreds of pages of battles.  And gaming techniques and terms that I’m barely adequate at explaining.  Actually, no, I’m not adequate, at all.  There are more gods, too.  And they all seem to be angry at someone; and they are all tricky.  Remember that Katia found the tiara that Donut lost that causes the wearer to be required to kill an entire family on the 9^th floor or they can’t leave?  Which means that now Katia and Donut have to try and kill each other.  Carl is wracking his mind over a way out of that one.  Well, Katia sees an opportunity to use a god and forces Carl to choose to trust her as she can’t really explain it.  But the quest the god requires ends up not being able to complete.  So, maybe there’s no answer to the whole Katia vs. Donut coming debacle yet.

The AI continues to baffle Carl with its ramblings.  Carl is unsure if any of it is important. Samantha is still with Carl and Donut.  And they both are in regular contact with the other crawlers they call friends; even Prepotente.  Carl suspects it is the AI that continues to find ways to mess with crawlers’ minds by causing them to confront long-lost loved ones or hated ones; like Carl’s father.  Lucia Mar didn’t make an appearance but one group had an anecdote about her.  She apparently stole something when she was on a talk show and got some spells that allowed all the crawlers to transport to each other; an express train so-to-speak.  And then she shared them, all friendly-like.  And then she turned back to nasty and murderous.  Can you say bi-polar?

The battles yield keys and each squad has to have their own key to be able to go down the stairs to the next level.  Keys have to be won, they cannot be given.  And the fucked-up AI system limited the number of keys in order to force crawler squads to kill each other to get a key. One of Carl’s and Donut’s friends, Imani, needs a key so Carl plans for her to ‘battle’ to get theirs; Carl thinks he has a work-around for their own key.

And there’s another murderous crawler that Carl and Donut will have to deal with.  Carl learned something monumental about his erstwhile father and stepmother; something that will probably haunt him.  And…we have an idea of just what Agatha is; although it’s pretty puzzling.  And it looks like Carl and Donut have a big surprise coming at them; apparently they now have an army.

And, finally: Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret… This time we are introduced to Jelly Bun, a demonic humanoid baby known as a Drek.  Jelly Bun is different since her link to her father was severed.  When the link was active, the Drek had to continuously eat since everything they ate went directly into their father.  With that link gone, Jelly Bun discovered that without having to eat every second, she was able to start thinking.  And one of the things she noticed was the number of Shadow Mimics that were hiding in plain sight.  Apparently, the AI hasn’t yet noticed them. Then something really weird happened.  Jelly Bun belongs to Mother Rory now who administers the faith to the monsters building killing mazes for the crawlers.  Mother Rory begs to be allowed a glimpse of the Pineapple Cabaret to bolster her faith.  So the portal is opened just to allow her a glimpse and that’s when Jelly Bun accidently steps over the threshold and pulls Mother Rory with her.  The two fall through at the same time as the missing hamster desperately tries to leap into the portal.  He misses.  And now all of them are in imminent danger.  I literally understand none of this.  I expect it to all come together at some point.  I hope.  ~~  Catherine Book

For more titles by Matt Dinniman click here