SPOILER ALERT: This story contains major spoilers for “A Parade of Horribles,” the eighth book in Matt Dinniman‘s “Dungeon Crawler Carl” series.
The “Dungeon Crawler Carl” lit RPG novel series ended its eighth installment, “A Parade of Horribles,” with several bombshells that will shake up the journey for Carl, Princess Donut, Mongo, Ren and their now-expanded party.
But among the many revelations for “Carl” readers (the dungeon AI isn’t an artificial intelligence — it’s an aggregate intelligence of the seemingly extinct Primal race; the nine-tier Scolopendra attack is no myth, but a retelling of history; and Samantha is absolutely even more important to this whole thing than Carl has been suspecting), the most off-the-rails surprise was one author Matt Dinniman did not have planned out when he started writing the final pages of Book 8.
Carl not only fights and “beats” the dungeon’s ultimate boss, the towering, fearsome Scolopendra, but he and Donut inadvertently turn the big bad into a companion who is now hot for Carl. And it looks like they’re going to be stuck with her as the party tries to make its way from where they are now entering the 12th floor all the way through the 18th floor before time runs out on this season of “Dungeon Crawler World.”
