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The Gate of the Feral Gods

The Gate of the Feral Gods

AdventureDystopian
Pages
848
Published
2021
Language
English

Synopsis

Carl, Princess Donut, and their crew take on the dungeon's fifth floor — a set of sealed "bubbles," each a self-contained world holding four castles that must all be captured before the stairwell down will open. A floating fortress held by warrior gnomes. A castle built of sand. A derelict submarine patrolled by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt ringed with traps. Fifteen days to take all four, and going it alone isn't an option — Carl has to lean on the low-level crawlers trapped in the bubble with them, whether or not they can be trusted.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

DarkFunnyAdventurousTenseGritty
SurvivalFound FamilyReluctant Hero
Writing4.0Impact3.0Characters5.0Plot3.0Atmosphere4.0

Genres

Adventure Dystopian Fantasy Humor Post-Apocalyptic LitRPG Science Fiction Comic Fiction

About the author

M
Matt Dinniman

Matt Dinniman is an American science fiction and fantasy writer, best known for the LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl. The son of a US Army soldier, he has described himself as a military brat and moved frequently as a child; he later studied at the University of Arizona and took creative writing classes at Pima Community College in Tucson, re-enrolling in the same workshop repeatedly and crediting its group critiques as formative to his development as a writer. He published fiction through sm...

Characters

Carl AndersonProtagonist

A Coast Guard veteran and marine technician who enters the dungeon with no combat experience and becomes its most-watched crawler through stubbornness and an uncanny talent for turning near-death situations into entertainment.

Princess DonutSupporting

Carl's ex-girlfriend's prize show cat and the dungeon's most improbably dangerous party member; her aristocratic indignation at mortal peril is matched only by her evolving dungeon abilities.

MordecaiSupporting

Continuing guide to the pair.

Katia GrimSupporting

A fellow crawler who first joins Carl and Donut on the third floor and becomes one of the series' most significant recurring allies, with abilities and motivations that grow more complex across the series.

All characters in The Gate of the Feral Gods

Frequently asked questions

  • Who are the Feral Gods?

    The Gate of the Feral Gods isn't a faction — it's a legendary-tier artifact Carl comes across on the fifth floor: a device that tears a doorway through the void between worlds to link two distant locations. Using it has a cost. When the portal closes, an ancient, maddened deity is loosed into the world on the side it opened from.

  • Is book four the longest in the series?

    At around 600 pages in hardcover, it was the longest entry in the series at the time it published — driven by the fifth floor's "Bubble" challenge, which splits the crawlers across four castles that all have to fall before the stairwell opens.

  • Does the party keep changing?

    Yes. The series never lets the group settle into a stable configuration. New companions join, old ones leave or die, and Carl's social orbit shifts with each floor.

  • Is book four a good entry point for new readers?

    No. The series is too serialized for this to work as a starting point. Read from book one.

  • Does the dungeon conspiracy become more visible?

    Significantly. Book four is where the dungeon's underlying machinery — who runs it, why it exists, and what it costs — starts to come into focus in ways that change how Carl approaches the game.

  • Is the tone lighter than The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook?

    Roughly similar energy, but with more political complexity. The humor is still present but the stakes escalate considerably in the second half.

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