The Butcher’s Masquerade, by Matt Dinniman

Book 33 for my 2026 goal of 36 books for the year! My link to the book is through my bookshop.org affiliate account, which means I may earn a small commission if you buy from there. I have continued my read through of all the currently published books in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman and have recently finished the 5th book in the series, The Butcher’s Masquerade (2025)! The book continues Carl and his sassy talking cat Princess Donut as they continue to fight their way down through levels of a deadly dungeon as part of a game show for an intergalactic alien civilization. Earth was essentially leveled by this civilization in order to make the show, and if Carl and Donut can survive to level 11, they can buy their freedom. If they can “win” the deepest level, level 18, they can win the freedom of the entire Earth… but no crawler in the history of the games has made it past level 15. The dungeon behaves like a computer roleplaying game, with the Crawlers building up…