THE DUNGEON ANARCHIST'S COOKBOOK

Matt Dinniman

An A Perceptual Shift Book Review

The more ridiculous this series becomes, the more human it somehow feels.

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook is a wild ride.

Some pun intended.

Carl, Donut, and the remaining crawlers arrive on the third floor, which consists of an absurdly complicated network of interconnected trains, stations, routes, quests, monsters, and rules.

Initially, it's confusing.

Very confusing.

There were moments when I wasn't entirely sure where anyone was going, why they were going there, or how all of these different pieces were supposed to fit together.

And then, somewhat masterfully, Matt Dinniman begins pulling everything together.

Things that initially seemed random start becoming important. Decisions have consequences. Separate storylines begin intersecting. And what initially feels like chaos gradually reveals itself as something much more carefully constructed.

But the increasingly complicated dungeon wasn't what stayed with me most.

It continues to amaze me how books built around some of the most preposterous circumstances imaginable can contain this much humanity.

You could look at Dungeon Crawler Carl on the surface and dismiss it as literary role-playing.

There are levels.

There are statistics.

There are achievements, loot boxes, monsters, classes, quests, and increasingly ridiculous weapons.

But these books have become so much more than that.

They're becoming stories about people.

About friendship.

About power.

About artificial intelligence.

About suffering.

And increasingly, about what happens to human beings when circumstances completely outside their control destroy the lives they understood.

The crawlers didn't choose any of this.

Their world was taken from them.

The rules were imposed upon them.

They're being watched, manipulated, rewarded, punished, and entertained by forces far more powerful than they are.

And yet they still have choices.

They still get to decide who they become inside circumstances they never chose.

Some people become more compassionate.

Some become selfish.

Some become dangerous.

Some break.

And some discover parts of themselves that may never have emerged under ordinary circumstances.

That's where these books have become genuinely interesting to me.

Carl isn't simply becoming better at surviving the dungeon.

He's becoming increasingly aware of the machinery surrounding him.

He understands that the game isn't fair.

He understands that the people controlling it don't particularly care whether he lives.

And he's beginning to understand that surviving within a broken system and resisting that system are two very different things.

The artificial intelligence running the dungeon makes that even more complicated.

What initially seems like another ridiculous element of the story increasingly raises questions about intelligence, autonomy, control, incentives, and what happens when something powerful begins behaving in ways its creators may not completely understand.

That's a remarkably serious idea hiding inside a book containing a talking cat, exploding monsters, and an incomprehensible subway system.

And somehow, it works.

That's what Dinniman continues to do remarkably well.

He uses absurdity without allowing the absurdity to erase the humanity underneath it.

I started this series because it sounded fun.

Three books later, I'm thinking about friendship, artificial intelligence, power, trauma, systems, resistance, and how people respond when their lives are changed by circumstances they cannot control.

I did not expect that from Dungeon Crawler Carl.

And that's becoming one of the things I appreciate most about it.

The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook is chaotic, ridiculous, thoughtful, and surprisingly human.*

And yes.

I'm absolutely reading Book Four.