Dungeon Crawler Carl is my second favorite book series. It is really fun and gets better and better. The universe expands beyond the dungeon and that gets very interesting. Book 1 is certainly more an introduction book.
I can highly recommend the audio book for these.
It is the project on backerkit? At least that’s the one I am finding. Backerkit seems like a Kickstarter copy?
That is very good information as my partner prefers audio 
Jeff Hayes is one of the best narrators out there.
I would agree been listening to them on audiobook and like the Dresden files can’t think of a better way to consume them. Also the guest narration on some books is great too.
In a week the latest DCC book comes out, pretty exciting. Will be fun for sure.
Yes - I felt it lost a lot compared to the previous two. And the next novels in the series seem to have just stopped. It’s a real shame - the first couple of books were outstanding.
Scott Lynch has had well documented mental health problems. Apparently he has submitted a draft of Thorn of Emberlain to his publishers but not heard anything past that
I knew a little of that I think (the MH issues) and I certainly don’t think he owes us the future novels. His mental health is undoubtably more important than my wish to read the rest of the story.
But when he’s able to write them, I will be very happy to buy and read them.
Currently on a James Herbert journey. Recently finished The Dark and now onto The Rats. Am enjoying his punchy style of writing, not a lot of fluff, generally gets on with it.
I read Domain as a young kid of maybe 11, and it terrifies me still! Great writer.
„She is not even using a litterbox, Carl. Highly suspicious!“
The audiobooks are indeed excellent though I have trouble following some of the fights. But it is not much better when reading. Fight scenes are complicated for me. Currently listening to The Eye of the Bedlam Bride and started the first one with my partner in the car … it is going to be our vacation driving book for the upcoming Ireland roadtrip.
Without knowing the specific authors or works, I can imagine that a contributing factor might be that fight scenes and sex scenes in books have some things in common. The authors who write most of them have the least experience of the subject.
Which leads to writing scenes which are flat-out impossible to visualize, because they’re just lifting parts they’ve read elsewhere, without realizing that those bits and pieces don’t go together, because that is not how rhythm, balance or muscle groups work.
Had the same problem, didnt get thru the first book. Maybe I should give it another go.
I finished Dungeon Crawler Carl book 1. Not crazy about how it ends (exceptionally abrupt), but otherwise it was pretty good.
I will have to pick up book 2 soon.
Also started and finished Wolves on the Border, a Battletech novel from the mid-80s. It was excellent for its time, and by modern standards it was good. I keep hoping the editor for Shrapnel will let me know he is buying my story (he says he likes it and has implied he will buy it, but that was 6 months ago). But until then I will keep reading and writing short stories in the universe, maybe he will want a couple.
Next up is a bunch of TTRPG rule books.
Finally forced myself to sit down and finish reading Batman: Revolution, the second book by John Jackson Miller which takes place between Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns. I say “forced” not because of any negative quality of the novel, but due to changing schools for my kid who won’t ride the bus home. As such, I no longer get to take lunch at work because I have to pick up my kid, so my primary reading time is gone.
Another very enjoyable read. A bit of a weird start, as apparently Gotham suffers from attacks from militias all of a sudden? Militias that have been there for some time? Still, the author makes it work, and manages to give us a compelling story and a very sympathetic Riddler. Like Batman: Resurrection, Miller gives nods to characters from the two Burton films, even doing small bits that help set up the second film, or explaining the absence of some characters that were in the first.
Moved on to a new Dresden Files novella, Out Law.
Having more or less fixed my old Sony ereader (now functional but not at its best), I’ve been wading back into the primordial sci-fi soup of scientific romances, most recently The World Below, by S. Fowler Wright, possibly best remembered today for Deluge which was adapted loosely to film in 1933.
A slightly late story to be considered a scientific romance, but it feels a decade or so behind the times and has all the usual hallmarks of philosophical pondering, nameless protagonist, racial and societal comparisons between ourselves and an alien race—here distanced by time rather than extraterrestrial origin—and an oddly remote, ponderous approach to anything approaching action.
Intended to be a trilogy, Wright never wrote the final part; can’t say I’m expecting a satisfactory conclusion because of that. Still, it’s interesting and atmospheric so far, even if it does all feel rather familiar.
The books’ endings will be less abrupt but they will always leave you wanting them to stop a bit later. At least I love the part of opening loot boxes and discussions in the safe rooms. And that’s always more at the beginning of the books.
All the books had wild scenes but Bedlam Bride goes even a step beyond imo.
Butcher’s Masquerade about floor 6 is my favorite one in the series, I think. Right now I am reading the latest one which came out last week and it is (like always) nerve racking. Great stuff.
“Sorry dear, it’s these shoes”, said Maude, making a feeble pretence of stretching out an arm, and trying to look worried. “Have a nice time. I shan’t wait up.”
