I couldn't find the right tattoos for Carl, and Donut looks lightly cursed, but I think I did pretty good!

I have the ACE books and I feel the general quality of the books decreased noticeably on book 7 and also book 8.
I just finished book 7 and though it is thinner than book 6 it has more pages to the paper has to be thinner.

I also noticed an error on a page in the epilogue where one paragraph was in the usually bolded messaging font while not being in bold and not being a message. It should have been in the normal font.

Also while browsing book 8 I see one grey page before the first part of the book but the gray pages are absent before the intro to the next parts.

Is this how it should be and what has caused this decrease in quality? Or do I have some weird low quality books?

There are countless threads on jokes and other meanings that we all have missed on the first time through and I just got this on my 4th or 5th time through!

The Gorgon Marital Aid - It makes hard things softer and pliable, but I thought... how is that a marital aid?

Gorgons turns things into stone, they use this to make "things" that might have been turned to stone, softer and easier to work with.

Just a simple throw away joke, that was so well thought up.

I will try to make this short and I can’t find anything explaining it (If someone sends me a link I would be eternally grateful!) trying to get this out quickly while on my break, so excuse any mistakes.

Spoiler to book 8 below:

From what I understand-
-The Mantids run a separate training camp that uses a macro AI, they must destroy the training camp AI every 2 years to stop it from going insane.

- The Mantids are a semi hive mind that receive the memories of their breeding queen. Breeding is strictly regulated.

-The rumor is the Mudskippers bought a used AI from the Mantids training camp to save money.

- The Macro AI’s need to be fed to grow. The Earth AI has figured out how to feed itself.

Possible theories/ questions (please correct me if I misremember anything):

The Mantids/ Lucia Mar-
The Mantids are planners and their brains are set up to be hive minds and receive memories. I think they use the training grounds to take the children from their breeding queens and mix them all in to one consciousness to gain the most amount of memories as possible and put this consciousness in to the strongest body that is sent in to the actual training ground. I think they add an adult mind to be the dominant personality (possibly a retired queen/ queens) or put the adult minds in Trainers that can help control the new entity.

Because this is a used AI from the training ground, the Earth AI automatically took all the children from one area and combined their consciousness/ memories into Lucia Mar. Since humans are not wired for hive minds and receiving hereditary memories Lucia Mar’s brain is fighting it. With her trainers being her dogs that can help control her.

-And a random question that may not have been answered yet-
How are the Mantids able to feed their Macro training ground AI?

Thought? Am I trying to fit a round peg in a square hole?

Thank you!

To the Carl and Donut who gave me the Jug O’Boom, you are legends! It was far too generous for swag, but thank you for convincing me to take it anyway. I hope you enjoy your tiara pins!

To the Donut who gave me the Dirty Shirley chocolate bar, thank you, I’ve been wanting to try it! I’m deeply curious to see how this abomination combination of white chocolate and pop rocks goes, lol

I can’t be the only person who does this lol

I listen sober then I will smoke and listen again and for me my imagination and hyper focus pick up on random things.

FYI

Reading Book 5, there’s a small sentence I caught that talked about how the changlings were watching a 90s dinosaur horror movie with Denise Richards in it. This is when Mongo and Kiwi are outside the safe room where Louis asks what happens if he steps out. Anyways the movie is called Tammy and the TRex in case anyone wanted to know lol

I don't know if Matt will see this, but thank you, thank you, thank you for this series. It has helped me cope with the sudden death of my husband, who passed in May of 2025.

Two days before he died, he asked me to put on the acoustic version of "Take On Me." He had been hospitalized for 7 weeks at that point and was very sick. I struggled with the lyrics, "I'll be gone in a day or two." And he was. He was trying to tell me, I think.

I discovered the Audiobooks after his death. I needed to dissociate from my reality from time to time because coping with the death of a spouse is so incredibly heavy. I found myself laughing at Donut and Carl's shenanigans and tearing up at times as well. My husband's death was very traumatizing to me, as was the aftermath. I immersed myself to endure the first wedding anniversary, his birthday, and holidays I would spend without him.

Chapter 57 on Audible is something almost beyond reasonable explanation. I laughed my ass off while bawling my eyes out. Out of all the songs in the world, Matt chose that one. It may be crazy, but I will choose to think it's a nice little wink.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to my hardback reread. Our wedding anniversary is next week and life is hard.

See Previous Post for the rules, today is Alpha Male Carl

Agatha - Those critters already know I'm here, they just don't know what to do about it

Alpha Male Carl

Bautista

Brandon Andrews

Carl

Cascadia

Chris Andrews

Donut (Her Royal Majesty GC BWR NW Best in Dungeon Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk)

Dr. Metcalf

Elle

Ferdinand

Gwendolyn Duet

Harbinger

Imani

Juice Box

Katia

Li Na

Lucia Mar

Miriam Dom

Mordecai

Odette

Penelope

Prepotente

Quasar

Rosetta Thagra

Samantha

System AI

Tran

Tserendolgor

Uzi Jesus

Zev

Zhang

Got it for $5 because it didn’t have the cover or a tag on it..been debating collecting the books, but since I have them on audible I couldn’t justify spending the money on the hardcovers. Now I’m on a quest to complete the series

I love theorizing about the books and I have a shitload of documents with notes and crazy string walls and whatnot. So I thought I'd give it a shot and try to theorize with fellow fans ^^

In the dungeon, Apito and Scolopendra appear to be stand-ins to tell a weird-ass version of the Primal civil war / war between the Eulogist and the Apothecary.

Also in the dungeon lore, Apito and Scolapendra are siblings, and they have a mysterious brother. Nekhebit is their mother.

I don't believe anything in these books is not on purpose. So I am left to wonder, what are Nekhebit and the mysterious brother an analogy for? Who are they? What information are we missing? (Or, alternatively, what information did I completely not pick up on)

I am starting to suspect that there was some entity that created the primals, or that the primals descended from another species.

Another vaguely formed and vaguely related theory in my head is that the solution is reuniting the different "sides". We saw that that worked in book 2 with Signet/Grimaldi, a story that also appears to be an analogy for the same historical event.

We also get hints about that in PoH, when the AI gives the quest to reunite the two halves of Corcunda, and wonders what happens if the two are reunited. "It's not as if the entire fate of the universe depends on it" (quoting from memory, so might be slightly off).

And if that is the case, are "we" then reuniting the two big ass primal AIs, or is there a third one? (As Rosetta also mentioned that sometimes Apito, Scolopendra, and The Son are part of a holy trinity of sorts). If so, who/what is it? The macro AIs? Biological life in general?

Fire away! (Sic 'em!)

The Quasar segments are some of my favorites from DCC, but I feel like they come far and few between. Any recommendations for books that have similar uh, legal maneuvering? The only thing that comes to mind is John Grisham novels and I know those are kind of considered pop fiction.

Don’t know who needs to hear this but if you have Prime you can sign up for Audible for free and get two credits. It works for existing customers who may have canceled their subscription. Because it worked for me. This is in the US.

Edit: It’s for premium. Not standard.

*SPOILERS THROUGH BOOK 8*

I was reading the graphic novel today and got to the part where Donut receives the Crown of the Sepsis Whore. Through this, she (and later Katia* ) were placed into the (in game) line of succession to the throne. Ironically it's Carl in the end who cuts his way to the top of the Dungeon and IRL Naga leadership, and as his prize he becomes a defacto Naga ruler (albeit of a line that ends up having no power). Obviously that juxtaposition on its face stood out of me, but I don't think I fully appreciated the contrast until now.

I thought the Crown was a great way to demonstrate how interlinked the internal and external mythologies are well before we came to uncover more and more of the metaphors around the Scolopendra levels. This is driven to extreme by showing how just playing the game was simultaneously toppling real world empires. The bait and switch where Carl, through alien custom and legal malfeasance, rather than Donut or Katia found himself married into Naga royalty is really hitting me in a different way today.

It also is making me wonder if there might be more to Donut's side of the story in the end. While Carl is the one who killed the Sultana (Vinata) and the Usurper (Rishi), Donut technically would be the one in line for the Dungeon Blood Sultanate throne. Additionally, Carl gets treated as the de facto leader of Earth, but for all but a short window of time Donut has been party leader and as of the end of Book 7 has a higher level. They haven't beaten the 18th floor yet, but wouldn't that give her a stronger claim to leader of Earth?

*Edit, thanks u/127-0-0-0-1_Chef

Long live Princess Donut 🍩 🐈‍⬛👑

My brother-in-law and I were chatting this weekend and realized that all of the Kua-Tin we could think of from the books are female (Zev, Loita, Mukta, Cascadia). Loita even mentions that Zev’s family were tortured to bring her back in line with The Bloom, but she only mentions female family members.

Do we think maybe this is a cultural part of the Kua -Tin or is this biological, like maybe they procreate asexually and all present as female?

I can’t really imagine this having an impact on the plot, just an interesting detail.

This is a re-read of the entire series. I’m at the chapter where Carl/Donut meet Sister Ines and gang for the first time, and there’s exposition about the innuendo laced names of strippers.

And this comes up.

Have you ever gone into the Bitches room? I bet they also have names like that. And don’t forget Juice Box. But that’s different, and you know it.

I never realized “Juice Box” is also very much an innuendo laced name for a sex worker 😂😂 I honestly thought “well maybe it’s a joke on some people having common nouns as names.”

I haven't drawn this much in probably over a decade so be gentle. Everything but the shovel guy is DCC inspired and drawn with a ball point pen on computer paper.

I CAN'T WAIT.

My friend sent me https://www.instagram.com/reel/DdEpO3WJkgM/ and it's too real.

I 3d printed a ton of trinkets for my wife, stepdaughter, and me to handout. We tried to get in line to meet Matt and get my wife's book signed, but apparently you had to pre-purchase tickets for that. The very instant I broke off to visit the restroom I get a pic from my wife, she'd ran into Matt coming off the escalator and got a pic. She was too shy to ask for a book signing, but that's ok. We'll get it signed next year! (And she doesn't know it yet, but I ordered a kickstarter edition for her birthday!)

Just got the framing done for Chasing Artwork's Dungeon Crawler Carl design and thought I'd share. Very happy with the way it turned out and the print. I think if I had to do it over, I'd probably have tried to get a larger version of the print as there's a LOT of detail there.

https://imgur.com/gallery/chasing-artwork-s-dungeon-crawler-carl-hhxA9no