If you haven’t heard of Carl yet, you must’ve been under a rock this past year.  See previous reviews for background.

The author knows that any reader wading through literally thousands of pages to get this far may not always remember all the details; so he provided a clever little recap at the front of the book.  It was a lot of fun; especially referring to the guy’s teacher when he was younger as “ol’ Anal Beads”.  Too funny.

Everyone is on the ninth floor now.  We’ve been anticipating this for a couple books and we’re finally there.  This is the traditional floor for outsiders (not crawlers) to field armies and duke it out in the Dungeon; all in the name of fun and murder.  This season is a whole lot different.  For one, the Crawlers have their own army as does the NPCs, who are now a whole lot of aware of what’s been done to them.  And…everyone can be killed; really killed, like for real.  So the stakes for the outsiders have gone way up.

This is also the floor that Carl has been dreading.  If he can’t figure out a workaround, Katia and Donut cannot both leave the floor, only one of them can live.  Katia ends up having to make a decision that will define her future and maybe Lucia’s, as well.  Inquiring minds are frustrated at waiting to know.

The very coolest thing that Dinniman put in this book are past crawlers!  We’ve known for a while that surviving crawlers are often offered a deal to walk away alive.  Many of them become ‘employees’ of the Dungeon such as Mordecai.  Some leave the Dungeon and go out to other planets.  None have ever returned to their own world.  But a whole lot of them come back to the Dungeon to join the Princess Posse and fight for Carl and Donut.  And many of them are cookbook authors which totally blows away Carl when he meets them.  Not that he can acknowledge that he is the current author or credit them with what they contributed; the AI can’t know about that. And the author provides a cute little chapter showing just what is offered to crawlers.

Hundreds of pages of pretty much non-stop action as Carl and the surviving humans navigate the rules; either thumping other armies or making treaties.  Dinniman also supplies a few chapters from the POV of earlier cookbook authors who are currently in Carl’s army; giving us some insight into how they managed and what they are currently up to.

Carl has to figure out to manage his new pet; including soothing Donut and Mongo that Rend would be a good addition.  He’s certainly a colorful addition.  There are, of course, plenty of gods running about making the crawlers lives more interesting.  It’s just so damn complicated; makes my head swim.  It is beyond my imagination to think of how he thinks all this stuff up.

Oh, and the space above the Earth has become a parking lot with lots of aliens gathering to either support the Dungeon, stop the Dungeon, there for the entertainment, or to murder each other.  It’s only of interest to Carl if it provides safety for the crawlers or helps him defeat the armies. 

Carl still agonizes over how to save as many people as possible all the time.  But he doesn’t seem as close to a mental collapse as was hinted in the last couple books.  And he helps do the impossible:  over 20,000 surviving crawlers move down to the tenth floor.  This is unheard of in the history of the Dungeon but so is much of what Carl’s engineered.

There’s also a little mystery involving a way station on or near(?) Earth where someone sells souvenirs and gimcracks; until he meets a goddess which lends itself to all kinds of questions – is she going to Earth?  How does a goddess exist outside the Dungeon?  Whose side is she on?  And I know I may not ever get answers to my questions.  On to Book Eight…

At the end, Carl’s lawyer, Quasar informs him that he now has a wife and she’s Donut’s lawyer.  There’s nothing more. I can’t even…  

I almost forgot to include something for you about the serial, Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.  That’s where the drama involving the shadow mimics is evolving.  Other than the shadow mimics taking over people in the Dungeon with the stated purpose of claiming the Pineapple Cabaret for themselves, I don’t yet understand their purpose to the main story.  ~~  Catherine Book

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