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Cover of The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 5

The Butcher's Masquerade: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 5

by Matt Dinniman

My Rating:★★★★★
Published
2022
Read
2025-11-23
Pages
721
Publisher
Penguin Group

Genres

FictionScience FictionFantasy

Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Carl and Princess Donut refuse to be prey in the fifth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition! Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose. Run, Run, Run. A lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed “The Butcher’s Masquerade.” But that’s not all. Just when Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, think they’ve seen it all as they compete to survive in the galaxy’s most popular game show, the latest dungeon level introduces a terrible new threat. The sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds. As the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career. But her prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back. Welcome, crawlers. Welcome to the sixth floor of the dungeon.

My Review

This is my second time reading through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I got through the first four before I finished this site and I'm not reviewing anything without taking the time to read it and that includes previously read books. This is currently my favorite series. This is a pretty basic concept lit-RPG book where the main character, Carl, ends up inside a dungeon with typical RPG style rules. The execution of that concept is the best I've seen in the lit-RPG space. The pacing is excellent. The characters are well developed and clever. Despite having a more open ended combat concept than other lit-RPG books such as He Who Fights With Monsters - it is generally easier to follow and feels more natural. This book is the strongest (so far - only 7 are out when I am writing this) in the series. The author was self-publishing when this book came out but has now been picked up by Penguin Random House. It will be interesting to see what impact that has on the books going forward.