I loved this intense continuation of the Dungeon Crawl game show with Carl, Princess Donut, and Mongo as they try to survive and get to the next level with the help of Mordecai. Despite the similarities between the books, each storyline is fresh and engaging. This level had the perfect balance of humor, love, real life issues, cuteness, danger, machinations, supernatural elements, surprises, and morality. This book continues exactly where the last book left off though this one feels darker and more emotional. Carl, Donut, and Mongo are now on level 6 of the Crawl – where the Hunters join the fun to hunt down the crawlers in addition to the continuing danger from the mobs. They are still very popular with the fans, Mordecai continues to assist them, Carl continues to come up with crazy dangerous plans, many of the characters from previous floors are back, Katia has decided to leave the Carl and Donut crazy train party, crawlers will die, and Donut continues to be Donut. I still love the interplay and the connection between Carl and Princess Donut and that Carl’s character is a sweet, snarky, messy, lucky, sarcastic, kind of dumb, angry, and awkward man who regularly screws up which just makes him a very likeable and relatable hero. I especially love his mantra of “you will not break me. I will break you” and his continual sneaky subversive efforts. The story includes what you’d expect from this genre – fighting, dangerous situations, supernatural creatures, evil entities, henchmen, loyal friends, tragic back stories, mystical coincidences, snark, plot twists, death, and laughs. There was once again some light ethical, moral, and philosophical undercurrents which added to the depth of the story but did not detract from it. I will definitely keep reading the series to see what the next levels are like and what happens with Carl and Princess Donut and to see what Carl’s continued plans are to mess up the game especially after the way this one ended.
Jeff Hays did a phenomenal job narrating the story and characters into life with enough change of inflection, tone and cadence to voice multiple characters quite convincingly. This was one of the best narrations I have ever heard. Reading the story was great but listening to it raised the enjoyment to a whole other level.