Published: May 13, 2025
Publisher: Ace
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #6
Genre: Fantasy, LitRPG
Pages: 832 (Kindle)
My Rating: 4.5 Stars
A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis:
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.
As management reels from the unexpected conclusion of the seventh level, the surviving crawlers stumble onto the eighth and find themselves scattered. It’s a map based on Earth’s final days before the collapse, where ethereal, intangible ghosts of humanity go about their lives, oblivious of the impending doom. Living amongst these ghosts are monsters based in Earth lore. “Legendary” creatures tied to the geographical location they inhabit.
Each team of crawlers is given a task: find and capture six of these beasts. The captured monsters will be turned into cards. Cards that can be summoned into battle again and again. The stronger, the deadlier, the better.
At the end of the floor, the bad guys will also have decks, and they will have some of the most powerful cards available. So it’s crucial to assemble the toughest squad possible.
But, like always, there is a catch. There’s always a catch.
As Carl and Donut know all too well, just because someone is captured, it doesn’t mean they have been tamed.
Her name is Shi Maria. She’s easily the most powerful monster in their area. If they want to survive, they must capture her. But she is no ordinary beast. She’s intelligent. She was once married to a god, a god who is now missing. Her special attack is known to drive one insane. They call her the Bedlam Bride.
“Beware, beware. Beware the Eye of the Bedlam Bride”
I have to admit, Matt Dinniman has come up with some really cool titles for each of the Dungeon Crawler Carl installments and I always get a bit excited when I see how the title will inevitably appear in the story and then again when it becomes apparent why it was really chosen. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride begins with our Crawlers entering the eighth floor of the dungeon after a game-breaking exploit was used on the seventh floor. The eighth floor dumps the Crawlers on a facsimile of Earth, in a location they chose and Carl and Donut have landed in Cuba. Why Cuba you ask? Well, Donut isn’t exactly a geography expert with her being a cat and all, so she did get pretty close to their intended destination of the Bahamas.
I was initially a little skeptical about how well the premise of the eighth floor mechanics would work, especially as a book and you know, not an actual game. The floor is a hot mess mish-mash of card games and mythology, where Crawlers must use flags to capture an enemy they have nearly defeated in battle, which turns them into a totem card. The totems are used to battle other enemies and have varying levels of rarity, stats, and abilities, so the Crawlers definitely want to build a good team in order to stay competitive because they will soon have to battle NPCs and eventually one another for dungeon stairway keys. What I was initially skeptical of turned out to be quite fun and extremely ridiculous – I mean, Carl and Donut end up with a card called Uzi-Jesus and it’s literally Jesus with an uzi and a huge amount of blasphemous snark. I did not expect it to be that engaging!
While the card game aspect is the main focus, there are approximately 12 (totally made that up) other plot lines that are central to the progression of the story. The impending faction wars, drama between former Crawlers, Katia’s multiple crises, an assassination, Carl’s increasing number of questionable tattoos, and more that I can’t even think of ways to briefly summarize. These books are chock full of plot, so even if you aren’t crazy about one aspect, there’s probably something else you’ll enjoy. Unless of course, you hate overly complicated stories like this where dozens of things are going on all at once and sometimes very conveniently intersect in interesting ways.
Carl and Donut, along with their guild companions, are definitely having to make difficult choices now that sometimes result in terrible tragedies. Donut especially is beginning to realize that something could happen to Carl and she would be alone, forced to continue on through the dungeon on her skills alone and it terrifies her. They have some brief, yet touching conversations about this and Donut’s way of changing the subject to something trite and meaningless to get her mind off such serious, sad subject matter is relatable.
The end of The Eye of the Bedlam Bride was an absolute whirlwind and though I was feeling somewhat fatigued by the end of this 832 page chunk of a book I was also left excited for the next installment, where the Faction Wars will begin. The epilogue really dropped some tidbits of info that will really make that floor a bloodbath and though I’m planning to take a break from the series for at least a month just for a mental refresh, I’m excited for This Inevitable Ruin.
Powder & Page 
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