The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Matt Dinniman has been building towards the sixth floor pretty much since the beginning of the series, so you knew he had to have something pretty epic planned.
“The Butcher’s Masquerade” begins on the sixth floor – AKA “The Hunting Grounds” – dropping 360 hunters and 85,000 or so crawlers into a landscape of woodlands and villages filled with a variety of aliens. The hunters are there to kill as many crawlers as they can and go home with bragging rights. But Carl and crew have other ideas.
To start off, Carl does Carl things and attacks the hunters before they even get a chance to attack the crawlers. This upends the whole level.
There’s a reunion of sorts at the early stages of the book. It’s quite touching. If your feelings don’t prick up a little bit, you might not have feelings, actually.
The few side quests and imbedded storylines (“The Daughter’s Revenge”) don’t get in the way of the main show, which is hunters being hunted.
Oh, but there’s a “reward” at the end of the floor with the top 50 crawlers being invited to a ball along with all the remaining hunters. Except maybe it’s a trap. It’s probably a trap.
A couple fan favorite characters meet their demise in this book. But that’s the way things are in the dungeon. And the story chugs along. Ugh. That just made me thing of the trains from the third book.
Dinniman has a way of keeping me engaged and not wanting to stop reading. That’s good, obviously. But more and more, I’m noticing that he has a knack for turning a phrase. While none come to mind right now, I recall thinking on more than one occasion, “that’s very well said.”
And as always, Jeff Hays is great at what he does. I particularly enjoyed Donut’s singing in this episode.
That said, there was a bit where a guitar played in the background of the book and that I didn’t care for. I really don’t want music and sound effects in my books. Maybe you’ll think differently.
I’m looking forward to the sixth book (“The Eye of the Bedlam Bride,”) but that’ll have to wait for a couple days as I’m re-reading “After the Fall” by Edward Ashton in preparation for him being on my podcast, “Buzz Words,” this weekend. Will post that review after the show.
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