The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl, #3) by Matt Dinniman 
on March 19, 2021
Pages: 532
Welcome to the Gun Show!
The top ten list is populated. The sponsorship program is open. The difficulty is ramping up. The first three floors were nothing compared to what Carl and Donut now face.
The Iron Tangle. An impossibly-complicated subway system built out of the world's subterranean railway systems, all combined and then tied together into a knot. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations are less than safe, and the exit is always just a few stops away.
But there is hope. For the first time, the crawlers are all working together. The loot is better than ever. And the secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly-useless book. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.
Should you really love the end of the world this much?
NEW ACHIEVEMENT! YOU’RE ON A TRAIN! CHU CHU MOTHERFUCKER!
Level 4 has all the crawlers on a crazy subway from hell where monsters lurk in the stations and there are subway lines named after every color of the rainbow, plus. What color is zomp? All trains run from Station 80 down but all the stairs down to level 5 are located at Stations 12, 24, 36, 38 and 72. How to get back uptown when all trains are going downtown? Even the author makes a note at the beginning of the story to let you know that with all the colors and numbers it will get very confusing so just follow along and don’t stress out.
Carl, Donut, and Donut’s pet Mongo are joined by Katia, who has been separated from her group in the last story and the leader asks Carl to do their group a solid and keep her safe. Katia, is still needs to work to improve her status, and Carl still questions her loyalty and whether or not he can trust her.
Carl comes to realize that what he wants most is to get as many crawlers through the dungeon and the best way to do that is to share information and help each other. So Carl sets up group chats with all the crawlers that he can connect with. No matter how many times Mordechai tells Carl that he can’t save everyone, Carl has no intensions of leaving anyone behind when the clock runs out.
Carl also begins building his skill with bombs (Book 8 is already named Carl’s Book of Boom) since his use of bombs grows and grows, and a lot of things will go boom in this story.
During book 1, Carl and Donut befriend a group of residents from the Meadow Lark Adult Care Community and their caregivers. They were outside during a fire alarm when the building collapsed. Chris, Imani and Brandon have worked hard to keep the elderly residents safe until the third floor, except those who chose to stay when the last level collapsed. Now all the surviving residents could choose new Races, enjoying the strength and agility that time robbed them of as senior citizens. Carl rescued Mrs. Elle McGibbons, risking his own life, so now he is a favorite of this woman who was almost to the century mark when she became an Frost Maiden, Blizzardmancer Class. Now she can hover off the ground and throw icicles. With a lifetime of experience, and now superhuman strength and vigor, she is not one to be messed with.
Big fan of Team Carl and Donut (a/k/a The Royal Court of Princess Donut) and their friendship. We now know that his ex-girlfriend was planning on selling Donut to a breeder and getting a kitten but Carl was trying to sell some of his things to get enough money to buy Donut so she could stay with him. Even now that they were able to purchase their own safe rooms, Donut wants to sleep on Carl so they just share one room. I love them. BFFs forever.
Two very important things happen in this story. The first is that Carl will be given what appears to be a useless cookbook, but it is actually a book handed down from one crawler to another giving tips, hints and suggestions to the next group of dungeon crawlers, as they all want the same thing, to save their own people and “Together, we will burn it all to the ground.” Now this secret book of rebellion has come into Carl’s hands but he cannot even let Donut know about this book since messages and conversations are monitored. The only privacy Carl from monitoring is in the bathroom where he finally gets to read the book and now Donut thinks Carl has digestion issues since he is always running to read more passages.
The second is the the NPCs are starting to become self-aware. This starts when one of the train conductors tells Donut and Carl about his little girl who he gets to go home to after work and later in the story he realizes that he doesn’t actually have a daughter and this is just a backstory planted in his mind. This self awareness is very important as it will snowball through the rest of the books. And this, on top of the AI that is running the crawl also becoming self-aware, is what helps Carl, Donut and so many of the crawlers survive down to the next levels.
I really am having so much fun with this series. I did read that Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door Productions is attempting to make a live action series. I hope they can do justice all the unique characters as some people argue that an animation would be a better idea.
Favorite Scene:
A loud commotion from the dance floor turned my attention back.
I’d only looked away for a second. Bomo and The Sledge were on their backs. The crowd, both the NPCs and the crawlers were screaming and running back. The remaining bouncers rushed toward the center of the club.
In the center of the floor stood Donut, swaying. Her health was in the deep red. Her cockroach skill had activated, the skill that saved her from dying from the first killing blow.
The entire front of her was covered in blood. A human crawler lay dying on the floor, blood geysering from a slash across his neck. A moment passed, and the man went still.
A single skull formed, appearing after Donut’s name.
I was out of my chair, gauntlet forming before I realized what I was doing. I was preparing to drop a smoke curtain, or if necessary, Protective Shell. But would that work against fellow crawlers? I tried to remember if Frank and Maggie’s dots had turned red when they attacked us. Shit. I don’t think they did. That meant Protective Shell would be useless.
The crowd, which had been running, stopped at the edges of the dance floor. The music stopped abruptly. Donut remained there in the middle, looking at the man she had killed.
Multiple bodyguards moved in from all directions, moving slowly. Since I didn’t know what had happened, I feared they were coming for her. I quickly assessed the situation.
Both of the cretin bodyguards were alive, but they’d been stunned. They each only had a few seconds left before they’d wake up. A glowing, bloody dagger lay on the floor.
The corpse had been about 25 years old, Asian. His name was Ji-Hoon. He’d been a level 21 Knife Sharpener.
“Carl?” Donut asked as I rushed up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Shoulder,” I cried, turning to face the guards. “Then heal yourself.”
Donut leaped to my shoulder. The guards didn’t attack us. One stood over the body of the fallen crawler. The others moved to help Bomo and The Sledge. None of their dots were red. I relaxed but only slightly.
“You’re okay,” I said. I pulled the alcohol cure potion and held it up. “Take it.”
“I’m sorry,” Donut repeated. She’d healed her own health, but it didn’t cure her of her inebriation. She’d used a potion instead of the Heal spell. She took the alcohol cure potion into her inventory, but it’d be a few minutes until her potion sickness wore off. She started to sob. “Carl, I never wanted to get a skull. I’m sorry. Nobody is going to like me now.”
“It’s okay,” I said, anger rising at the dead guy by the moment. “What happened?”
“The lady, she cast a spell and my guy and the other rock guy fell, and I fell too, because Sledgie was stunned, and the other guy had a knife and…”
“What lady?” I snapped before she could finish, my eyes scanning the crowd.
Whoosh.
A woman from the crowd flew forward. She tumbled to a stop at my feet. A two-foot-long icicle erupted from her eye socket. She’d been pierced from behind.
“That lady,” said Donut.
Imani and Elle rushed forward, joining us on the dance floor. The bouncers parted to let them pass.
“She was about to blast you two,” said Elle, looking about for additional threats. Both her hands glowed. I watched as a skull appeared after her name. She didn’t seem to care. “I get dibs on her gear. Donut, loot the one you killed before we get kicked out of here.”
Imani took up a position behind us, wings fully spread. I shuddered as she brought us into an ethereal hug.
You’ve been Juiced! 10% Temporary buff to Strength!
You’ve been Shrouded! 10% Temporary damage reduction!
You’ve been Trolled! 25% Temporary acceleration to healing!
“I didn’t want to kill anybody,” Donut said once again. “Maybe those stupid dogs. But not a person. Not a real person.”
I reached up and rubbed Donut’s head. An even larger crowd had formed around us, everybody staring. The bouncers all stood still and didn’t move, as if unsure what to do. In the far corner of the club, from the unmarked door that led into the back, a tall, shadowy figure emerged. It paused, taking in the scene. A second figure also came from the back. This was a small fairy, buzzing about the other figure’s head.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I whispered to Donut, who continued to quietly sob. “They attacked you, and you defended yourself. There’s no need to be upset. If you hadn’t killed him, you’d be dead now. And don’t worry about people not liking you. Nobody will get mad at you for this. Trust me.”
“Are you sure?” she sniffed.
“I am positive,” I said.
I took a moment to puzzle over Donut’s reaction. She didn’t blink at killing a trainload of monsters, or NPCs for that matter. She wasn’t human. She’d never been human. But for some reason she was having a really hard time with this. I knew part of it was because she was drunk. Every day she was growing into a more and more complicated creature. She was far removed from the cat who had first emerged in Mordecai’s guild all those days ago.
“Anybody else want to try something?” Elle shouted. “You come for Donut or Carl, you come for all of us. I will freeze the blood in your veins and make your genitals shatter like glass!”
“Easy tiger,” I said. “I think it’s over.”
“That’s right it’s over,” she called. She glared at a dwarf crawler. “You giving me the hairy eyeball? Back the fuck up!”
“Me?” the dwarf squeaked. “No, no, sorry.” He took several steps back.
“Is she always like this?” I asked Imani, who just shook her head. I was starting to see why Elle was in the top 10 and Imani wasn’t.
“Don’t you think anything about it,” Elle said, speaking to Donut. “Don’t you cry. This was inevitable. Once word gets out how you handled it, nobody is going to mess with you again.”
