Looks like I’ve got a case of the sequels! Today’s stack includes books that are part of a series, books about movie sequels, and a couple of upcoming books on my reading list for some old series.
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario and The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman
After reading Dungeon Crawler Carl (as mentioned last week), I zipped through the next two books in the series, and now I figure maybe the reason Dinniman has written so many of these in such a short time period is because otherwise the fans would be hounding him for more constantly. I certainly want to see what happens next, but these first three were the only ones I have so far from the publisher, so I may need to go shopping soon.
Carl’s Doomsday Scenario brings Carl and Princess Donut to the third floor, where the real game begins. (It’s weird to say that, since the first two floors were already truly deadly and a lot of crawlers didn’t make it.) Here’s where they get to choose a race and class and start spending those experience points on different stats — and then trying to level up quickly to keep pace with the increasingly terrifying monsters they’ll have to face. Carl and Donut have captured the hearts of the alien audiences, which is generally a good thing — fans mean better sponsorships and loot, plus the Syndicate running the show needs viewers so they can make more money. But they’ve also made some enemies, largely because of Carl’s refusal to play by their rules. The more they learn about this dungeon crawl, the more they realize the whole thing is rotten to the core: the real enemies aren’t the mobs they face in the dungeon, but the unseen people pulling the strings.
The second book does warrant a content warning. I mentioned before that there’s a lot of language, gore, and innuendo — a good deal of it is because the alien show borrows from a lot of Earth’s videogame tropes, and the system’s descriptions of monsters and items often have edgy humor (one of the things Carl can’t stand). On this floor, the crawlers are introduced to side quests, and the one that Carl and Donut encounter involves murdered prostitutes. I understand that it’s intended to demonstrate how awful the game itself is, but the whole “dead woman as motivation” is a terrible trope, even if it’s inside of what’s supposed to be a “game” within the story.
One of the things that Carl learns about the game is that there are often hints about what you’re supposed to do. When they encounter boss fights, the key to victory is usually being smart, not just being strong. That’s the part of the book that I really enjoy, watching Carl figure out the puzzles and clues. The other thing Carl does is push boundaries of what’s possible in the game. The showrunners are constantly tweaking and patching things: one type of mob turned out to be too powerful, players have figured out an exploit that they didn’t intend, and so on. Carl is the type of player who finds the loopholes and uses them to his advantage, and it’s always fun to see what he figures out next. (In these first few books, he often does some interesting tricks with his inventory system.)
The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook brings Carl to the fourth floor, a setup called the Iron Tangle that is a huge interconnected train system. They have to ride train cars on countless lines named after colors or things like Nightmare Express, and monsters flood the trains every so many stops. The entire level is a big puzzle, figuring out where the stairwells to the next floor are and where the monsters are coming from and going to. We get some more scenes involving some of the other crawlers, as Carl tries to work with as many others as possible to get them to the exits. (The showrunners, of course, aren’t too thrilled about this — that’s why they’ve put bounties on the top 10 crawlers.)
The one big weakness of the book is that because Carl and Donut are the main characters (and I already know there are at least 7 books in the series), it doesn’t really feel like they’re in actual peril. I mean, there are big fights and they get hurt, but I don’t really believe that they’re actually going to die. Other characters, sure — there have been many other crawlers that have been introduced and were then killed off later, but they were never the focus of the story. Carl and Donut have plot armor, and so it does take away a little of the tension when they run into a difficult situation. I still do enjoy seeing how they worm their way out of trouble, but I don’t fear for them as much as for the other characters they encounter.
The editions from Ace Books also have the new bonus material, titled “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret,” and it’s a story focused on some of the monsters that were previously seen in the books. It gives you a bit of what’s happening behind the scenes, the way that the mobs themselves are real creatures who are made to play a part in the dungeons. It gives a little more insight into the way the show works and I’ve been enjoying those peeks behind the curtain.
The Art of Inside Out 2
My family saw Inside Out 2 this summer, watching as Riley got older and her familiar emotions encountered some new companions along with … (dun-dun-DUN) puberty. Anxiety, Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui crowded into the newly renovated headquarters, and the new emotions had to rebalance the way things worked. Meanwhile, outside of Riley’s head, Riley is attending a hockey camp, hoping to make it onto the team of her new school, but her behavior creates a lot of tension with her old friends.
The Art of Inside Out 2 showcases a lot of the concept art behind the movie with character designs and environments, as well as some storyboards and color keys. One page showed some considerations when creating the expanded cast of emotions: it was important to give them all distinct shapes, and there’s an image showing all of them abstracted as little shapes to show how they look together as a crowd. It’s always fun to see the various concepts behind the characters, particularly when there are very different looks that didn’t make it into the film. There are even some emotions that didn’t make the final cut, like Jealousy and Shame, but we get a peek at them.
This volume is mostly images without too much text after Pete Docter’s foreword and Kelsey Mann’s introduction. Some of the captions provide a little more detail or story, but a lot of the images are just labeled with the artist’s name and the medium. That means there’s not a lot of spoilers because it doesn’t really dig into the movie’s plot, but it also seems strange that in some cases we don’t even get a label. For instance, there are some pages showing the character designs of Bree and Grace, Riley’s best friends … but their names aren’t even mentioned on those pages. In contrast, there are some short paragraphs talking about the inspiration behind Val and Dani, the older girls on the school team. The book does feel like it’s fairly heavy on the environment, though, showing the expanded and changed landscape of Riley’s mind, but there are also some pages showing the outside world: the hockey rink, the campus, and so on.
It’s fun to flip through and see all the artwork, but I do prefer my “art of” books with a little more explanatory text. That may be why this particular book doesn’t have a byline on the cover, though — the text included with illustrations seems to be provided by the various Pixar folks who worked on the film, so it’s limited to what they shared.
The Art of Moana 2 by Kalikolehua Hurley
Over Thanksgiving weekend, we went to see Moana 2 — our youngest was about three years old when the first film came out, and as you can imagine it made a huge impression on her at the time, even if some of that influence has faded a little over the years. We were excited to see comes next: Moana, having become a wayfinder in the first movie, was now exploring the ocean and searching the islands for other peoples. She found a clue to an island that was supposed to be a connection to other currents, but it had been sunk by the angry god Nalo and was guarded by a huge storm.
This art book dives into Moana’s world: we get to see how she and her parents have aged a few years, and now she has a little sister, too. Aside from the demigod Maui (who makes a reappearance), we meet some other members of her village: Moni the storyteller, Loto the engineer, Kele the grumpy farmer. The book has character and costume designs, close-ups of some of Moni’s tapestries, and boats with different designs for the sails. I appreciated the level of detail in this book — we get a lot more quotes from the artists and directors that explain who people are and give a little background about their designs. There’s even a page that talks about the ‘ava ceremony that is performed before Moana is sent out on her mission.
The book does contain some spoilers, so I wouldn’t recommend flipping through it before seeing the film, just because it does give away a few surprises that weren’t seen in the trailer. It also includes some things that were cut from the film — for instance, some other monsters and strange people that populate the more fantastical realm Moana and her friends find themselves in.
The Art of Moana 2 is an excellent example of what I look for in an “art of” book — a mix of concept art and explanations that lets you see a lot of what went into the final look of the film as well as some of the options that ended up on the cutting room floor.
But Wait, There’s More!
This is where I usually put my “Current Reads” section, but this time my current reads also fit this theme. I’ve got two kids’ books on my list that are sequels: Inkworld: The Color of Revenge by Cornelia Funke is a fourth book in the Inkheart series, which my wife and I read together a long time ago. I wrote about the trilogy (back when it was a trilogy) back in 2011, but the third book was originally published in 2007, so it’s been quite a while, and I was surprised to hear that there was a new story. Since it’s been a while since I last read Inkheart, I’m planning to re-read the trilogy first before I read Inkworld.
Another blast from the past is The Vanished Kingdom: The War of the Maps by Jonathan Auxier, which is coming in April 2025. It’s set in the world of Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes. I read Peter Nimble back in 2011, and interviewed Auxier at Wordstock, a local book convention. The sequel, Sophie Quire and the Last Storyguard, came five years later, but then I assumed these stories were done, too. I’m excited to see what Auxier has in store this time, and I’ve just started my re-read of Peter Nimble to prepare.
Disclosure: I received review copies of the books covered in this column. Affiliate links to Bookshop.org help support my writing and independent booksellers.
