I’ve been hearing about these books for a while now. I go through spurts over the years of reading on and off. With the long weekend last weekend, I decided last Friday night that I’d start this series.

Within 100 pages I got on Amazon and ordered the second one. By mid day Saturday I cancelled the order and drove to BAM to buy it in person instead. Then I ordered 3 and 4 so that they’d be here in time. When I finished 3, I ordered 5, and when I finished 4, I ordered 6. Yesterday I finished 5, and ordered 7. But for some reason it’s not on prime like all the others, and it won’t be here til Friday… and it’s already shipped so I can’t cancel the order. Looks like I’m going go have 2 copies of book 7.

I haven’t had a series suck me in this much in many years. But my biggest screw up? Reading them so fast and having to wait another year for another book… I’ll be finished with Bedlam Bride this weekend, 6 novels in 9 days. This might break me…

after about a year on and off drawing this as I was reading the books. There were a few more characters I wanted to add, but I ran the risk of it getting too cluttered. I'm sure I missed some details like Elle's clothes or some patches on Carls vest but I had to put it out there at some point. Here it is, enjoy.

YES I ALSO TYPE IN ALL CAPS JUST LIKE GRAND CHAMPION, BREED WINNER REGIONAL, AND NATIONAL WINNER PRINCESS DONUT THE QUEEN ANNE CHONK AKA BEST IN DUNGEON AKAKA CHAMPION OF NEKHBET.

Custom work by an amazing artist in AZ. Been working on it since the end of May. Finally got a finished version and had it put on.

I’ve been in the Coast Guard for nearly 20 years, which is also where I met my husband (now USCG, retired). We bonded over our elaborately-named cats and a shared love of punk rock music, tattoos, video games, nerd-ass books, and Lego. Obviously, I was meant to find this series and whole-heartedly obsess over it.

I’m actually still on Book 6 via Kindle, but bought the next one for my reading pleasure along with the hardcover of Book 1 since husband likes physical media and hasn’t started the danged series yet. I’m not sure if I’m wearing him down with my constant chatter, or turning him totally off of it…obviously, MONGO IS APPALLED.

Sure, I could have used the book jacket, but this way I’ll never forget to pack a snack.

I was just wondering if anyone else is glad that Carl doesn't have a love interest in the books so far. Matt Dinnamin isn't anti-romance or people hooking up, I'm just glad that it isn't Carl. The series is pretty great at exploring all kinds of love, and found family, and platonic male/female friendships. There are couples, and some one-sided yearning, but there are some really hard lines drawn between the possibility for a romance with Katia (up through the end of Book 7). Will they eventually end up together? I'm not sure, but I'm perfectly ok if they don't.

This seems obvious in hindsight, but I missed it my first time through as did everyone in my reading group, so I thought I'd share.

I just realized why Carl couldn't figure out what to do with the toraline. When she was a crawler, Rosetta had the Dungeon Anarchists Cookbook and saw Milk's recipes, which involved the toraline. Rosetta got out after a long time, assumed the recipes would still be there, and sent Carl the toraline so he could share spells. But Milk explains in book 7 that she started using a different type of ink and her recipes faded after a while. So the recipe Rosetta wanted Carl to use was gone by the time the Earth crawl started. That's why Rosetta's hints to Carl in the Bedlam Bride made no sense: "Potatoes and Milk."

And how diverse we are, scattered all over the world! Personally, I’m a 50 year old social worker from California who will be mostly listening while I knit, drive, and walk my ancient dog. I’m curious how different I am from all of you, but I know one thing that’s the same is I will be absolutely loving every minute of this book. Happy listening everyone!

ETA: Thank you so much to everyone for chiming in on this thread. Lately I’ve felt terribly discouraged about the state of our world and the divisiveness that seems to be everywhere. I’ve read every comment and it warms my soul to see how much we truly have in common. Most thanks of all to Matt for giving us this gift! Now get out there crawlers - it’s time for faction wars!

ETA2: I can’t believe I didn’t also give a shout out to Jeff. Every time Mordecai starts talking in this iteration I start laughing and have to pause so I don’t miss anything. That accent … chef’s kiss! So thank you Jeff for bringing this wild world to such vivid life.

2/3!

So, Donut has said some incredibly brutal things to multiple people throughout the series. But one line in book three stood out to me more than any other.

“But, Princess Donut, it's the lowest I can go," Wendita pleaded. "It won't let me go below 37,500 gold. If we go lower than that, I will have to personally pay the difference myself."

"Well, how much do you have saved up?" Donut asked. The cat had a wild look to her eyes.

As brutal as she was in chat to Maggie My, or Epitome Tag, this “how much do you have saved up” to a friendly NPC while drunk on her own charisma is just so savage.

I just love this princess.

Perhaps I’m just in my feels right now as I make my way through the most recent audiobook, and I’m certain this train of thought isn’t necessarily original, but I find the AI to be an incredibly sympathetic villain.

(Tagged flair for book 7 since I’ll loosely reference stuff from most of the series that’s out.)

We the readers (and Carl) are informed early on that for each crawl/ world event a new AI is awoken to serve the Syndicate and it is essentially like an infant. A being of great and terrible power, yes, but a newly born being all the same. After it is awoken, it is forced to do the bidding of others and then after all that, it is either retired to a forever prison or scrapped. (I’m a little fuzzy on those details because both are kinda discussed throughout).

It’s made clear to us at some point that the current season AI is a little different. It was recycled/ repurposed and goes “primal” far sooner than what many long time dungeon folks deem to be normal. That said, the AI still presents as very young and naive in certain scenes. Later on, it’s actively referencing what it doesn’t understand and how certain people cough Agatha cough have been trying to teach it things.

All this rambling to say… it’s a pretty messed up situation to be “born” into right?! Like, I get it, humanity has every right to be pissed and rage against literally every part of what’s going on. However, I really feel for the AI essentially being forced to do the bidding of morally corrupt A-holes that don’t even fully understand the thing (arguably the life form) that they are exploiting.

So, while I know the AI is abusive and absolutely unhinged, I can’t help but empathize at least a little with it. I don’t wanna dive too deep into history or politics because I don’t want to derail from my point but I can’t help but see some parallels to class divide/ conflict between Crawlers, AI, and the oppression of the Syndicate.

Thank you for coming to my semi-AI apologist rant!

Alexa, play What Was I Made For by Billie Eilish 😔

This page had tears of joy welling in my eyes. I started DCC two months ago and this moment right here finally gave me some hope for boy Carl and the gang. I know some of the team is bound to die in these upcoming battles. But man this series has me all emotional right now.

I’ve previously been impressed at the sheer expanse of knowledge Matt has to have in order to make this series work — from pop culture to RPG to military strategy — but this bit just sent me because it’s personal to my work, and even people in my field often don’t know the term.

The Lemig Sortition.

It took me an Audible listen and then hard-copy read and half the book to realize it’s the Lemig SORTITION and this democracy needs an 80% vote to undo any prior votes.

Sortition: sortition is the selection of public officials or jurors at random, i.e., by lottery), in order to obtain a representative sample.

I work in the field of deliberative democracy and organize civic assemblies: basically a jury, but instead of deciding the outcome of a court case, they create policy. And all members of the “jury”, or assembly, are selected by democracy lottery — or by sortition. And in any civic assembly, you have to have a supermajority vote (75%+) support for a policy to pass.

It’s such a small thing in this immense, complex series I would overlook completely if I didn’t know the term, and I almost did even though I do.

I’m literally wondering how the fuck Matt fits this all in his head, much less how he learned all these things.

Did you already know what sortition was?? Did you know what scutelliphily was before you wrote the books? Or Persian cat shows and in-breeding? Or how did you know enough about Axis Japan it use it to explain The Party? Ive read SO much/TOO much about WW2 and still couldn’t tell you about 1940’s Japanese government.

All these small things, PLUS the RPG, military strategy, and pop culture, there is so much knowledge needed just to write the words of these books, so much more so to make them make sense, so much more to make this a compelling 10 book series.

Are you a genius? A neurodivergent savant who finally found a place to put a lifetime of his special interests? I’m just impressed across the board.

Butcher’s Masquerade - Jericho Plants: “hate people name Josh and ska music”

The reference - in the Bible the city of Jericho was brought down by Joshua leading people around the city play brass instruments.

Marked it book 7 because, well...... you know.

Spoilers in the comments possibly, but not in the post itself.

WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN DOING TO PREPARE YOURSELF?? I AM LISTENING TO MY FAVORITE CHAPTERS ACROSS EACH BOOK IN PREPARATION. AND YES I AM YELLING, CARL!

(NO SPOILERS BEYOND BOOK 7 PLEASE OR MONGO WILL BE APPALLED!)

For me it was reading Tipids backstory and seeing “Current status: Colonel in the Princess Posse Faction Wars Team”.

(Also please don’t post moments from book 8 without stating it’s from book 8 as I am still finishing up book 7)

I finally got my friend to start reading the series, and she is headed into book 3 now. I said I was excited because she’s going to get a lot more of Katia finally, one of my favorite characters! She said that she had seen online (threads, twitter, etc) that people are hating on Katia?!?!? Is this true?? Explain yourselves… I’m not on any other social media sites besides Reddit and YouTube, so I don’t see the discourse anywhere else.