#90 in Fantasy
The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook
- 534
- Pages
- about 10 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 1 week on the list
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Our view
The third Dungeon Crawler Carl book sets Carl and the cat Donut loose in the Iron Tangle, a knot of subway lines so intricate that some readers lose the thread. The long explanations of trains and stations slow the opening and matter less than they seem to. After that the action and the humour return, the ending is strong, and the larger story behind the game grows. For committed fans, with some patience.
Worth knowing The third Dungeon Crawler Carl book, from 2021, takes Carl and Princess Donut, the talking cat, down to the fourth floor, the Iron Tangle: a knot of subway lines and stations the size of a continent, where the trains are the map and getting off at the wrong stop is how most crawlers die. The title names the item Carl receives, a guide written by earlier crawlers on how to break the dungeon’s rules. Matt Dinniman’s series started as self-published LitRPG, Earth demolished and its survivors sent into an eighteen-floor dungeon as a galactic game show, and by this volume the game-show politics outside the dungeon matter as much as the monsters inside it. Not the place to start; the books only work in order.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Welcome to the Iron Tangle! Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, have to team up with other contestants not just to survive, but to solve a deadly puzzle in this third, mind-twisting novel in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition. Earth has been transformed into the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show: Dungeon Crawler World, a nightmarish, multilevel, video game–like dungeon filled with traps, monsters, and mind-bending puzzles. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds, from classic steam engines to sleek modern cars. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations aren’t always what they seem, and the exit is perpetually just a few stops away. The top ten list is populated, and Carl and Donut have made it. But that popularity comes with a price. They each now have a bounty on their head. They must work with other crawlers to solve the puzzle of the floor, but how can they do that when they don’t know who to trust? The secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book. Welcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon. Includes part three of the exclusive bonus story “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.”
Reading order · Dungeon Crawler Carl
Full order & progress →- Dungeon Crawler CarlStart here
8.78.7 / 10 - Carl's Doomsday Scenario
8.78.7 / 10 - The Dungeon Anarchist's CookbookThis book
8.58.5 / 10 - The Gate of the Feral Gods
8.88.8 / 10 - The Butcher's Masquerade
9.09.0 / 10 - The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
8.98.9 / 10 - This Inevitable Ruin
9.09.0 / 10 - A Parade of Horribles
8.78.7 / 10
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.6 across 2,198 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 94% of the weight and the score stays at 8.5 — the Fantasy average of 8.0 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 8.6 | 2.2K | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook?
It has 534 pages — longer than 51% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
The same shelf — Fantasy — and a score of 8.5, the closest to this book.
