This Inevitable Ruin – Matt Dinniman
Do you remember "Game of Thrones," Season 8, Episode 3 — "The Long Night"? The final battle with the Night King, and the moment the series had been building toward since the beginning.
I was beyond excited, and I remember hitting the halfway point of that 90-minute episode and realizing I was bored. The spectacle had swallowed the emotion. The character relationships, alliances, hero journeys — everything that got us there — had been pushed aside in favor of set pieces.
I couldn't help thinking about that episode while reading "This Inevitable Ruin." For six books, Matt Dinniman has been building toward the Faction Wars, the defining conflict of the "Dungeon Crawler Carl" series. Like George R.R. Martin before him, he assembles armies, shifting alliances, political maneuvering and dozens of competing factions, even jokingly acknowledging the "Game of Thrones" inspiration at one point.
On paper, this should be the payoff. Instead, I found myself asking, "Is this it?"
That's not to say the book lacks ambition. Quite the opposite. Dinniman somehow keeps hundreds of characters, dozens of plotlines and an absurd amount of worldbuilding in motion simultaneously. The scope remains impressive, but bigger isn't always better.
The recap at the opening — framed through Quasar and his niece — is genuinely helpful given how dense these books have become. We learn more about the true nature of the Crawl, the AI and the Containment Interface, along with additional Cookbook author history that clearly sets up future prequels (a la “The Hunger Games”). But so much of this felt like homework.
There's an inordinate amount of box-opening and rule-setting before things really start moving, and I found myself genuinely disengaged at the 200-page mark for the first time in the series. When the system AI tells Carl that something isn't important, why are we, as readers, subjected to so much detail about it anyway?
When the Faction Wars battles finally begin in earnest, they're genuinely creative — the trench warfare sequence is brutal and well executed, drawing uncomfortable parallels to World War I — but the sheer volume of POV switches, political maneuvering and newly introduced characters left me frequently unsure of what was actually happening or why it mattered in relation to the larger mission (capture Laracos Tower; end the Sepsis Whore curse).
As with other entries in the series, the moments that stayed with me had almost nothing to do with the war itself. Katia revealing the truth about her daughter. Carl comforting Donut after she's forced to commit a war crime. Juice Box realizing what her relationship with Louis actually means. Carl frightening Donut with his rage, only to recognize that she'd echoed the exact words his mother used to say about his father. Those moments justify the time investment, and there simply aren't enough of them here.
The interludes featuring previous Cookbook authors were another highlight. Milk's quiet work helping Crawlers escape across multiple seasons — and seeing characters like Miriam Dom, Prepotente and Bianca through that lens — reinforces that this series has always been about small acts of resistance accumulating.
There's undeniable satisfaction in watching elite factions receive their long-overdue comeuppance, too. But when every conflict requires escalating to an even more impossible battle, and every new obstacle gets solved by introducing something more powerful — up to and including literal gods — the escalation starts to feel lazy.
Perhaps this is simply the nature of LitRPG. Video games thrive on constantly increasing complexity, larger boss fights and expanding systems, but as a novel, "This Inevitable Ruin" is overstuffed. At nearly 900-pages, it could have lost 300 without sacrificing anything essential. What's frustrating is that Dinniman is clearly capable of better.
Was I entertained? Absolutely. Was I confused? Frequently. Would I still recommend "Dungeon Crawler Carl"? Yes, but with more caveats than I would have offered after the first few books.
Jeff Hays grew on me slightly more here. His revised take on Mordecai, now that he's in a human body, makes my earlier complaints obsolete, and his performance kept me moving through a book I would have taken months to finish in print. I found myself referencing my physical copy regularly just to keep track of names and factions, which tells you something about what Dinniman is asking of his readers.
I've spent dozens of hours with Carl, Donut and this wonderfully ridiculous universe. I'm ready for answers, resolutions and character growth — not another layer of dungeon mechanics.
One book left, and I'm glad there's a break waiting on the other side.
Rating (story): 3/5 stars
Rating (narration): 3/5 stars
Format: Audiobook (personal library)
Dates read: June 16 – June 30, 2026
Multi-tasking: Not recommended. The density of factions, rules and POV switches demands attention, though even with full focus, expect to occasionally lose the thread.
