The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman is the fourth installment of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, the LitRPG sensation that took us all by storm over the past couple of years. On the fifth floor of the dungeon, Carl, Princess Donut, and Katia find themselves in a bubble divided into four quadrants where they need to claim four castles across different biomes to pop their bubble and get to the stairwell. There are gods. There’s intergalactic political drama. And there’s always a bigger plot to follow.
After being a bit flabbergasted by The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, I loved The Gate of the Feral Gods. Carl, Donut, new party member Katia, and their “manager” Mordecai are already characters I can’t help but root for, and the addition of other crawlers mixed with the larger-than-life overall plot of the dungeon and the Borant Company makes this IMPOSSIBLE to move away from. With that ending, I’m gnawing at the bars of my enclosure to get started on The Butcher’s Masquerade.
Read our full summary and review of The Gate of the Feral Gods below. This post contains spoilers.
The Gate of the Feral Gods
Description
New Achievement! Total, Utter Failure.
You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.
A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.
It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.
Here’s the thing. It’s never easy. Carl and his team can’t go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can’t-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?
Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.
Tropes
- LitRPG
- Found Family
- Adventure
- Humor
Review
How are you reading Dungeon Crawler Carl?
How are you reading Dungeon Crawler Carl?
Overall Impressions 😊
Committing to a long running series is hard, let alone basically a LitRPG video game in story format stretched across 10 books. After the third book, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, I found the story a bit narratively spaghetti itself, just like the train system in it. I was hesitant about the rest of Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I’m not going to lie, I thought maybe the novelty had passed.
Well, I am so pleased to tell you all I was wrong.
Gate of the Feral Gods felt like we’ve finally finished the intro levels and are now getting into the main quest, which had me on the edge of my seat and engaged the entire time. It does the thing a long running series needs to do. It breaks the world wide open. We have continuing storylines, a growing character cast, real stakes, confirmation on some of our suspicions, and so many new questions about the state of the universe.
From Cerberus’s derpy brother, to Carl being drafted into the service of a fire pantheon, and what’s going on up on the surface of the earth, we’re in for a treat in The Butcher’s Masquerade.
Perfect For Fans Of… 🧭
Honestly, I continue to recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl to anybody who just wants to have a good time. Fantasy romance readers, you’ll feel right at home, because just like in a good fantasy novel there’s a lot of plot keeping the chaos grounded. Any LitRPG fan who hasn’t picked this up yet, it should be at the top of your TBR. And if you love a series with interesting animal companions like Princess Donut and Mongo, plus non romantic depictions of capable women like Katia, you’re going to be right at home here.
The audiobook especially is the move. Jeff Hays’s narration is in an all star category and the full cast performance turns this into less of a reading experience and more of a show you’re listening to.
If you made it this far into the series, you’re already committed to a long runner, so bring your video game enjoying, cat loving, underdog rooting personality and you’ll have a chaotic but fantastic time.
Should you skip Dungeon Crawler Carl? Only if you don’t like great books.
Characters 👥
How should I say this. I find Carl an incredibly attractive main character. Not just looks, but he’s just rootable for. He’s angry. He’s capable. He’s good with animals. He’s clever as heck. He’s impulsive but also in touch with his feelings. What’s not to like? What WAS Beatrice thinking? Big fan of Carl and I’m here to support his rights but also his wrongs.
Okay so I have to come clean here. I am not the biggest Princess Donut fan. I love animal companions and I love her very much because of that, but her unique sardonic British persona is not quite for me sometimes. It doesn’t deter me from reading, it just doesn’t do anything for me. That said, I enjoy Princess Donut growing like a child discovering the world and her tender relationship with Carl very much, and would love to keep reading that.
Mongo, on the other hand, has my whole heart. He reminds me so much of our new puppy Titan that I started picturing him as both a velociraptor AND a black German shepherd puppy at the same time. Take it or leave it.
Katia is my new favorite kind of female character. She’s soft, a bit insecure in her ability to do well, but crazy capable and she’s finding herself at the end of the world. I feel like soft female characters are getting backed into the sidekick position lately, and although the direction she’s going at the end of the book pains me (staying intentionally vague here for the spoiler-averse), I think it’s the right move for her character.
Mordecai continues to be the star of every scene he’s in. He is the only reason these fools are still alive, and I hope they take him with them when they inevitably break out of the dungeon Catching Fire style. I cannot wait to see what he becomes next.
We could go on and on about every side character, from Samantha (instant favorite), to Odette (what’s her game?), to Brad (he is, in fact, not the king), but thankfully we have 10 books to enjoy each and every one of them.
Plot 🗺️
If you’ve read our Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook summary, you know the trains uh confused me. That is absolutely not the case with Gate of the Feral Gods. There is a very clear, followable plot and it’s incredible. I loved the bubble, and I hope Matt Dinniman imagined this as each character being in literal bubble wrap, popping their way out, because that’s how I imagined it.
The different quadrants structure was an interesting take, although I have a secret suspicion that the sandworm and the weird elf female doll were ALL so we could get Samantha. I don’t care how we got there. I’m just happy that we did.
I found the Juicebox and Changeling storyline a bit too long, but I understand the road we needed to take to humanize the NPCs, so I appreciated where it went. And Juicebox x Louis was hilarious so I’ll take it.
As always, Matt Dinniman continues to be smarter than us all. I still don’t understand how the three pieces of the gate work, I wager no one but Katia does, but I get the gist of what happened with the Hunters. These are all steps to set up the next few books, and there is so much brewing.
Any multi pantheon plotline, especially when it’s well thought out, has me in a chokehold, and I’m SO curious to see where the Embris storyline goes. More of it please. Any Syndicate lore Matt Dinniman wants to drop for us, I will eat it up.
Lastly, I loved seeing the surface. The New Queen Anne epilogue was amazing. Again, not getting into specifics in case you’re just here for the review, but I cannot wait to see what happens in the next book.
All in all a very well done teaser for The Butcher’s Masquerade onward, while continuing the storylines we’ve come to love.
My Favorite Quote 📣
“Grab the stick?” Donut shrieked. “What do you mean, grab the stick! Thumbs, Carl! Thumbs!”
Matt Dinniman, The Gate of the Feral Gods
Writing Style and Narration ✍️
Jeff Hays continues to be an outstanding audiobook performer. Each character feels like a different person is performing them, and honestly this is the peak audiobook experience anyone can get in this format.
I know I’m on an island here, but I don’t love Donut’s posh accent. I think it’s because I don’t love Donut’s posh character. Now don’t come at me, I already told you, I LOVE Donut, it’s just this one aspect of her that doesn’t super do it for me. That being said, her posh accent is great for a posh accent. I just wish she didn’t have it. Then again, I’m a dog person.
Synopsis
Synopsis
Welcome to the Bubble: Hump Town, Changelings, and the Air Quadrant
Carl, Princess Donut, and Katia find themselves on the fifth floor as the previous floor collapsed. They find out being a crawler in the top ten doubles all current and future bounties. The party starts in the Air Quadrant, surrounded by sand and desert, and makes their way into Hump Town.
Mordecai has taken the shape of a skyfowl this floor. The survivors are divided up into groups into “bubbles.” Each bubble has four quadrants: Air, Land, Subterranean, and Water. They need to claim castles in each quadrant before the stairs open.
The Air Quadrant’s castle hangs in the air, which they need to find a way up to and conquer. Carl convinces a Changeling to let him use his telescope and scouts the castle. It’s a gnome fortress protected by aircraft bombs and shields. He also learns that Hump Town has been separated by daily bombings. Carl gets together with local crawlers consisting of archers and two drunken underperformers. In the recap episode, Lucia Mar reflects a spell and Ifechi, a top tier crawler, dies.
Carl infiltrates Hump Town’s town hall. With Donut, Louis, and Firas, he breaks into the building and discovers that the guards are not normal dromedarians but Changelings disguised as camel-looking NPCs. Below the building he finds a necropolis map and the real reason the gnomes have not bombed the town: an imprisoned gnome named Wynne, Commandant Kane’s uncle, is being held as collateral.
Carl is offered a quest to free Wynne and gain easy access to the Wasteland. Wynne is killed before Carl can complete the quest. Carl escapes and finds out that unless they can provide daily proof of life, Hump Town will be destroyed by the gnomes.
Carl and Katia build a desert motorcycle, which Donut names the Royal Chariot. Carl makes Katia shapeshift and they briefly resurrect Wynne with Second Chance, convincing the gnomes to let them up to the castle. Carl and Donut take over the castle before it destroys Hump Town.
Carl realizes that the pocket watch the gnomes and the camels used to communicate is part of a device called the Gate of the Feral Gods.
The System AI’s Tantrum, Maggie My’s Worm Body, and the Goose That Pops the Air Quadrant
The system AI wants Carl to step on a bunch of gerbils. When Carl refuses, it throws a tantrum and sends a swarm of them to Hump Town. Carl gives in, and the AI stops. They realize the AI can get vindictive.
Chris Andrews, Brandon’s brother and one of the nursing home employees, arrives. He is controlled by Maggie My, the mother of the girl whose death Carl accidentally caused in Book 1. She is now a worm and can infiltrate bodies, and is controlling Chris. Maggie is using Chris’s body to summon a celestial grenade to summon a god to kill Carl. Katia shoots Chris with a freeze bolt and they trap him underground. Mordecai thinks he can save Chris later with a yam.
Juicebox, the NPC Changeling, reveals how the Gate of the Feral Gods works. It can open a gate home, which is the hunting grounds for the NPCs, but they need to get all three pieces.
Carl and Donut enter a formerly Texan home and find a little gnome girl named Bonnie. Bonnie’s “pet,” which is an unhinged goose, is an environmental boss, meaning it can only be damaged by the items in the house. Carl and Donut fight the goose, and Carl puts its head into the garbage disposal, liberating the Air Quadrant.
Donut is given a toy Donut to promote like an influencer. They go through many iterations of it, every single one of them exploding. Carl booby-traps one of these and makes it fall over while they’re in the waiting room for the show they’re supposed to promote the toy on. They kill Loita, the woman who replaced Zev. A third party mediator shows up to try and prove wrong doing but he cannot. Carl finds out this kind of thing happens ALL the time and Lucia Mar already took out two administrators. They lose 5 days but eventually return to the floor.
Ghazi’s Sandcastle, the Birth of Samantha, and the Octopus in the Water Quadrant
Katia and other crawlers on the floor are advancing in the Land Quadrant. Carl joins a crawler named Gwendolyn at “Ghazi’s Sandcastle.” Inside, he picks up a winding box. Ghazi was attempting to summon a lover. The summoning failed. However, Ghazi’s failed summoning did not call a helpful power at all. It released Psamathe, helped transform Queen Quetzalcoatlus into a deadly ghost, and trapped Ghazi with a sand-ooze “wife.” Her body turned into glass and her spirit got trapped.
Carl uses his sticky feet spell and walks on the ceiling, and temporarily incapacitates the worm. Katia kills Ghazi, while Carl and Donut are swept into the Water Quadrant. Later, the broken glass spell releases Psamathe’s trapped spirit from the doll head he was given in the form of his summoning. The doll’s head now is Samantha, who is a demigod. Samantha is insane, unhinged, but they can keep her in a saferoom and she can be their ally.
Carl and the rest of the Water Quadrant dive with a submarine and find themselves fighting a city boss, a giant octopus with tons of babies. Carl releases a blood lust spell to turn the octopus babies on each other. With that, Protective Shell, and Katia’s rocket and buzzsaw attack, they kill it.
Carl, Katia, and one of the remaining crawlers HAVE TO use the Gate of the Feral Gods to escape the ocean, but unfortunately they unleash a feral god into the realm.
Embris the Fire God, the Quest to Save Orthrus, and Carl Becomes an Acolyte
Embris, the feral god of fire, is unleashed onto the bubble’s land. He is looking for Orthrus, his lost dog. There’s another group quest declared: if they can kill Orthrus, Embris will pop their bubble. Carl refuses to let the dog die.
Meanwhile, the rest of the crawlers in their bubble reconnect an electrical trap to electrocute the entire Subterranean Quadrant and kill Quetzalcoatlus. Their bubble pops.
Carl and Donut lure the puppy, but Quan Ch, one of the crawlers with celestial robes, decides to attack Orthrus. Carl and Donut get into a fight with him, resulting in Carl ripping Quan Ch’s arm off. The only way Carl can keep Orthrus safe at the end is deciding to worship Embris and summon him then and there. He reunites Orthrus and Embris but also becomes the fire god’s acolyte at the same time.
Carl has to now pay a 5% tax of all of his earnings, give a drop of blood at his altar every day, and also kill Embris’s brother Hellik.
Gate of the Feral Gods Ending Explained
Katia, Donut, and Carl arrange a way to transport every remaining crawler out using the Gate of the Feral Gods. Katia decides to leave the party to reunite The Daughters, Hekla’s previous party.
Carl survives the demon Slit’s attack after receiving a chistera extension clearly meant to throw Samantha’s head around as a giant ball to fight the god. Then he springs his real trap on Maggie My. Maggie, still hiding in Chris, attacks Carl near the buried gate device. Carl uses a phase potion to pull the parasite from Chris’s lava-rock body. Maggie burrows into Carl instead, but a powerful healing potion forces her back out, and Mongo kills her. Chris is finally freed.
Katia opens the real Gate of the Feral Gods underwater and floods the faction market, where the Hunters are supposed to buy all of their gear. The market is supposed to be the economic backbone of the faction wars.
Zev explains just how much damage Carl has done to sponsor interests. Carl, Donut, Mongo, Katia, and the newly freed Chris then head for the stairs. Carl is now the number one crawler, and he makes a loud and public vow that he’s going to kill every single Hunter as he enters the Sixth Floor.
In the epilogue, we’re taken back to the surface. It turns out, Beatrice and Brad returned from their cruise right after Carl had broken up with her. They were waiting outside of the airport when the collapse happened. They’re now living in New Queen Anne, a new settlement at the center of Seattle. Beatrice won’t pull her own weight. She cries a lot and worries about Donut even though she was going to give her up.
Brad, who is a total bro, keeps thinking about how he’s a king and how he’s going to let Beatrice go. He took Beatrice back to their house some time after the collapse to show her Donut was gone. There, Beatrice found Ferdinand, or Gravy Boat, the street cat Donut is in love with. Gravy Boat now lives with them in a tent in New Queen Anne.
Bounty hunters are looking for Beatrice and Ferdinand to use them against Carl and Donut. Just as the bounty hunters swarm the tent, Odette’s agent Lexis interrupts, killing Brad and kidnapping Beatrice.
Pop your to-read bubble and grab The Gate of the Feral Gods 📚✨
Chat, we’re so back. Not that I would ever lose faith in this series, but the small wobble I had is fully fixed and I’m ready for The Butcher’s Masquerade. Mostly I’m looking forward to the reunion, Carl in his vengeance era, what shape Mordecai will take on the next floor, whether we’ll EVER see Ferdinand, and wondering if Katia can bring The Daughters back together.
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