Name: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
Rating: 4.571428571428571 (21 reviews)
ISBN: 9798396866379

Matt Dinniman

A pantheon of forgotten gods. An old grudge between a talk show host, an heiress, and the man they shattered along the way. A rapidly deteriorating AI system. An inconvenient tiara upon the head of a friend. It is bedlam on the eighth floor.

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

BC Hark

"The sincerest form of flattery is when people cry when they meet you" Princess Donut

"Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it." Carl 

Zachary Roberts

"Carl," Donut sald. "This is just like that nerdy Pokémon game you used to play. Or that one with the guy with the spiky hair that didn't make any sense. What was it called? Yugoslavia or something?”

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Carl and Princess Donut journey into insanity in the wildly entertaining sixth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition! Coast Guard vet Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, have survived longer and leveled up higher than anyone ever thought they could in the galaxy’s most popular reality show, but after the shocking conclusion of the seventh level, it’s now anyone’s game. A pantheon of forgotten gods. An old grudge between a talk show host, an heiress, and the man they shattered along the way. A rapidly deteriorating AI system. An inconvenient tiara upon the head of a friend. It is bedlam on the eighth floor. The crawlers are given a new task: Find and capture six monsters, each of which will be turned into a card. The stronger, the deadlier, the better. At the end of the floor, the bad guys will also have decks, made of some of the most powerful cards available. So it’s crucial for crawlers to assemble the toughest squad possible. But, like always, there is a catch. There’s always a catch. If Carl and Donut want a winning hand, they’ll have to capture the most lethal and terrifying monster of them all: Shi Maria. She was once married to a now-missing god. Her special attack is known to drive one insane. They call her the Bedlam Bride. But even if Carl and Donut can capture her, they know all too well that just because someone has been captured, it doesn’t mean they have been tamed. Welcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the eighth floor of the dungeon.

Phil Linley

This is the book where Dungeon Crawler Carl stops feeling like a story about one guy and his cat grinding through floors. It reveals itself as the sprawling, intergalactic saga it was building toward all along, and Matt somehow keeps every single plate spinning at once. There is a LOT going on here. The crawl itself is still churning out its usual drama, floor by floor. Galactic politics has ballooned into more factions and players than you can shake a stick at. And after five books of hints and table scraps, we finally get real information on the Primals and what they're actually up to. Any one of these threads could carry a book on its own. Matt's running all three in parallel, and mostly landing it. That "mostly" is doing some work. The lore drops are genuinely good, the kind that recontextualize stuff from earlier books instead of just piling on new nouns, and the scope finally feels earned rather than sprawling for its own sake. But zoom out and do the math: we're deep into a mounting cast of galactic players and still only scratching the Primals, with 18 floors left to clear. I love the ambition. I'm a little worried about the runway. Either Matt's got a serious acceleration planned, or this series is longer than any of us signed up for. What keeps it from feeling bloated is that the emotional stuff still lands even with all the plates in the air. There are some legitimately sad moments in here, a steady stream of "oh shit" turns, and, if you're actually paying attention instead of just riding the jokes, more depth under the surface than a book with this much dungeon-crawler chaos has any right to have. As Donut put it: "Viva la revolución."

I've loved this series since the start, but this particular volume rekindled my love of the series. The previous volumes were great, but dragged in some places, and the drama just didn't hit the same way. This time it was different. It takes you for a ride and when you think you're going to get off it keeps giving and giving. A mix of characters bring delight, comedy, tragedy, and so much more. We've got Uzzi Jesus, Asojano, Shi Maria, Raul, and many more. Not to mention the hoards of seals, crabs, and sluggalos. Reading this book is a bit like watching an episode of Futurama (from the good episodes) and Breaking Bad mixed together. A bit like a kid mixing together all the Slurpee flavors all into one cup and combining it into something magical. You wouldn't believe it, but it's damn good. 

I have to wait to read the next volume until another one is published so I don't read the last in the series to be left with nothing. I've put at least nine books ahead for my nighttime reading before I will make it to This Inevitable Ruin. I want to savor it and not read through too fast and have nothing left. I'm so excited for the next book to see what happens next. 

I've loved this series since the start, but this particular volume rekindled my love of the series. The previous volumes were great, but dragged in some places, and the drama just didn't hit the same way. This time it was different. It takes you for a ride and when you think you're going to get off it keeps giving and giving. A mix of characters bring delight, comedy, tragedy, and so much more. We've got Uzzi Jesus, Asojano, Shi Maria, Raul, and many more. Not to mention the hoards of seals, crabs, and sluggalos. Reading this book is a bit like watching an episode of Futurama (from the good episodes) and Breaking Bad mixed together. A bit like a kid mixing together all the Slurpee flavors all into one cup and combining it into something magical. You wouldn't believe it, but it's damn good. 

I have to wait to read the next volume until another one is published so I don't read the last in the series to be left with nothing. I've put at least nine books ahead for my nighttime reading before I will make it to This Inevitable Ruin. I want to savor it and not read through too fast and have nothing left. I'm so excited for the next book to see what happens next. 

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

Reviews

Highlights