The Gate of the Feral Gods is the fourth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series written by Matt Dinniman. The mayhem continues, and this time they are in a bubble. Not just any bubble. It’s a bubble with 4 connected but distinct and locked-off areas, each with its own biome, characteristics, and boss battles. In order to get out of one area, you have to defeat your current biome’s boss. Fairly straightforward, but things get complicated when actions from one area affect another and make it harder. Carl, Donut, and Katia have to puzzle out how to take out their first area in order to help the crawlers in other areas because no one gets out until all four areas are conquered. They have about 15 days to do all of this.

I enjoy the Dungeon Crawler Carl universe, and I enjoyed this book, but about halfway through I realized that the author introduces so many new details so rapidly that it gets confusing. At some point, I just gave up trying to remember characters, places, events, and interactions, not to mention potential foreshadowing. It makes sense for the canon of the world to contain so much information, and from Carl’s perspective it would be overwhelming as well, but from my perspective it became too information-dense to create a cohesive understanding of what’s going on.

This didn’t necessarily take away from my overall enjoyment of the book, but it has me questioning whether or not I want to continue investing time into this series. The main characters are great, and the whole thing is very fun, and there were moments during the climactic ending sequence that got me excited, but the process of trying to parse all of the details was distracting. It took me out of the flow of reading and brought me back to the real world, feeling frustrated with the communication style, like when someone tells a story and I start to lose the threads; it feels a little pointless and self-indulgent.

I am interested in the adventures of Carl and Donut, and I love watching them narrowly survive countless death traps. The characters are well developed and fun, and the more I learn about the extended universe, the more I am curious about what will happen in the coming books. Still, I have to decide whether I want to keep climbing the ever-increasing mountain, but the details are becoming more and more slippery, like trying to follow a ghost around a museum. The Gate of the Feral Gods is another fun ride, but with so many other rides, is this one worth another go-round? I’m not sure yet.