The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman – Review

Published: April 8, 2025

Publisher: Ace

Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #5

Genre: Fantasy, LitRPG

Pages: 720 (Kindle)

My Rating: 4 Stars

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:
Attention. Attention. The gates are down. The hunters are loose. Run, Run, Run.

A lush jungle teeming with danger. Savage dinosaurs seeking blood. A fallen princess intent on vengeance. A mysterious, end-of-floor celebration for the top crawlers, dubbed “The Butcher’s Masquerade.”

The sixth floor. The Hunting Grounds.

As the remaining crawlers battle for their lives, a new, terrible threat looms. Outside tourists are finally allowed to enter the game, and they are here and ready to hunt. Among them is Vrah, a famed and veteran hunter, intent on collecting the biggest trophy of her career.

But their prey is far from harmless, and this season they are fighting back.

Dungeon Crawler Carl and Princess Donut return in book five of the acclaimed LitRPG series.

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I think the Dungeon Crawler Carl books have reached the point where they are just too long now. Don’t get me wrong – I had a fantastic time reading this book, but I read it for days at pretty lengthy stretches and it started to feel like it would never end. Plenty happens, so there’s really not a moment of boredom, but I do wonder if I’ve reached the point of diminishing enjoyment with this series. I may also just need to take a bit longer than a month break in between installments!

Carl and Donut have now reached the much anticipated (for me at least) sixth floor where the remaining Crawlers must now watch out not only for the increasingly deadly mobs but also the Hunters, which are aliens of various species who have specifically trained and paid to kill Crawlers on this level. The Crawlers in the top ten are especially at risk because the most powerful Hunters from various factions have targeted them and we all know Carl does very little to keep his mouth shut and not attract additional unwanted attention. The deadliest Hunter – a mantid named Vrah – is after the popular duo and this is on top of all the other stuff they’re trying to achieve. Not to mention Katia has left the party to go about her own vengeance quest, though now she and many of Carl and Donut’s other allies have formed a guild so they can continue to communicate and work together. Surprisingly we also get more backstory on Miriam Dom and her strange caprid companion, Prepotente, in this installment as well.

There was just a lot going on in this installment and it might have sent it over the edge for me a bit. We have the Hunters vs the Crawlers, the returning Signet quest (the half elf/naiad from a previous floor), Carl is trying to find a way to move NPCs to the ninth floor, the actual sixth floor goals and quest… you get the point. I’m really impressed that Matt Dinniman somehow managed to keep all these simultaneous storylines all going in the same general direction and they continued to make sense. I did find myself less interested in some storylines than others, but things jumped around so much that I didn’t have long to be bored at any given point in time. As I said, it was really a little bit too much!

Overall, The Butcher’s Masquerade was an impressive installment that kept things fast paced and interesting throughout, despite the fact that it clocks in at over 700 pages. While there are some emotional moments, Carl and Donut are both becoming hardened Crawlers that will do whatever it takes to overcome whatever the dungeon throws at them. I think this shift began a couple installments ago, but The Butcher’s Masquerade is where it’s become obvious that their personalities are adjusting to deal with the escalating danger and challenges. It’s tough to remain a ‘good’ person when the goal of the dungeon is to Kill, Kill, Kill! I’ll definitely be continuing on with the next installment of the series, though I might wait a bit longer than a month, just to give myself a break from this world so I don’t get fatigued with it.