Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and authors for the eARC.

Surreal, savage, and surprisingly poignant—Carl and Donut navigate Earth’s ghost-haunted final days, capturing legendary monsters that can drive you mad (literally). It’s a madcap blend of deck-building chaos and deep emotional hits, the kind that sneaks up on you between the laughs.

Am I spiraling right along with Carl? Yes, I absolutely am. What started as a clever little sci-fi story, has turned into a deeply meaningful series. I am continually amazed at how deeply I feel for these characters and how many important themes there are woven through. I am going to be so deep in a book hangover when this series ends.

New Achievement! 6 books and and this is probably my favorite one yet.

We’re on the 8th level and it’s CHRISTMAS! Our crawlers are back on some version of Earth and the AI is going full rogue.

Battle cards are active and Donut is the card master for the team. And some of the cards are hilarious. Samantha is becoming one of my favorite characters. Even if she’s totally unhinged and befriends a god called She-Maria who’s also a spider thing.

Some of our NPCs are also joining the group, especially the strippers from the Penis Parade.

We learn that Miss Beatrice is even worse of a person than we originally thought.

But the found family vibe is bigger and better than ever. Even Lucia Mar is helping the fam. And Ellie is of course the cranky old grandma and we love her.

This one just made me so happy. The story is still just as crazy, but it has so much heart.

Carl and his allies continue their desperate fight for survival in the deadly dungeon, now facing even more absurd and dangerous challenges. The stakes are higher than ever as the galactic game show’s twisted rules push the crawlers to their limits. Meanwhile, Carl’s growing resistance against the system threatens to upend everything. If you’re a fan of the series, Eye of the Bedlam Bride delivers everything you love; more chaos, deeper lore, and even higher stakes. If you're new, start with Dungeon Crawler Carl (Book 1). I cannot express with words how much I adore this series. It's a 10 out of 10. Must read series in my humble opinion and a mere review doesn't do it justice. Go in blind. Have a great time Crawler.

""My Burcu is going to kill you," the man growled, scrambling up as the others pulled him away. "She's going to have to wait until tomorrow. Get the fuck out." Burcu was a crawler floating around number 10 on the top list. I'd never really talked to her, but 1 did have her in my chat, having briefly met her during the Butcher's Masquerade. Like the bartenders, she was also a Porsuk. A badger. Her class was Swashbuckler, the same as Bautista and Tran. She'd been one of the three people who'd fought over the memorial crystal at the end of that whole boss fight. I knew nothing else about her other than she was very serious, reminding me of Hekla. And that she was Turkish. I realized all of these guys were maybe in the same family." - Woohoo! Turks made an entrance!

Little home shoutout aside, the series continued to get crazy every minute. At this point I knew that Carl and Donut were going to survive because Book 7 here we go, but I got more and more curious about how they were going to pull it off. Demons were swarming the land, an interesting Pokemon style fight was going on, and AI was taking another step to make itself totally independent.

Bringing back the people from everyone's past was a dirty move, a few lines by Carl here explained why that was the best: "Kids aren't always a product of their parents. But sometimes that doesn't matter. Sometimes parents can cast a shadow so thick, you can drown in it. Frank had said that to me right before he handed me the Ring of Divine Suffering. He'd died soon thereafter. "You know," I said to the man who couldn't hear me, "I used to be so scared of disappointing you, and I don't even know why.""

I could rave about this series from the rooftops forever. This was probably one of my favorites. Carl and Donut get into even more shenanigans and trouble. Add in the head of a sex doll as a teammate and you have comedy gold. I can’t stress enough how much I think everyone should read this series.

There is alot to unpack on this journey. Full concentrate is definitely required to keep up with all the various moving parts and track all the moves being made. i love all the hidden Easter eggs and innuendo in reference to pop culture and politics. The audio is outstanding as well as all the narrators do a fanstatic job conveying the characters. I can't wait to see what happens in the next one.

As always, I adore the atmosphere of this series, it’s chaotic, crazy, and unexpectedly touching. This book had a few more personal moments between Carl and Donut, and I really loved that. And even more focus on Samantha, I love her even more now! The whole card concept was pretty interesting, too.

I’m honestly scared to read book 7 without book 8...

I can’t believe I’ve already read six books, it feels like I just picked up the first one. I seriously can’t imagine life without Carl and Donut anymore 😭

"The Eye of the Bedlam Bride" (Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 6) is an explosion of creativity.

This installment plunges Carl and Donut into a wildly inventive new dungeon level based on Earth's final days, introducing a unique card-game mechanic that's both bizarre and brilliant. Specifically, the way the "Last Day on Earth" cards twisted mundane memories into horrific, deadly challenges was exceptionally clever and disturbing. The signature hilarious banter between Carl and Princess Donut is sharper than ever, providing much-needed laughs amidst the chaos. The book truly excels at deepening the overarching lore, revealing more about the alien system and setting the stage for massive future conflicts. It's a consistently entertaining and surprising ride, expanding the universe in exciting ways.

I am absolutely astounded at the emotional impact this series has had on me. What started as a silly little dive into a litRPG book has now become my full-blown obsession. Carl and Donut are off onto the next floor. Matt Dinniman continues to raise the stakes and adds even more depth to the characters we've come to love.As I get closer and closer to the end, I find myself dreading and anticipating the next book in equal measures. Anticipating because these are EASILY the best series I've ever read, and dreading because I don't want it to be over. It takes a special kind of talent to craft a story like that. That being said, I do think the card game was a little bit confusing. Definitely worth hanging in there!

Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.

Matt Dinniman does it again! I enjoyed this book. It just gets more outlandish and more fun to read. I highly recommend this book (and the series so far).

Matt Dinniman does it again with this absolutely fantastic continuation of Carl and Princess Donut's (mis)-adventures! This tale just absolutely becomes more and more convoluted and twisted and even if you lose the plot for a bit or come back to this after a while (in an attempt to stretch out the joy you get from reading this), you can still get back into the flow of things easily. I can't wait to see where Carl and Princess Donut end up!!

Wow! The epilogue for The Butcher’s Masquerade was so intense I immediately had to pick up The Eye Of The Bedlam Bride and keep reading. I am constantly impressed by Matt Dinniman’s ability to incorporate familiar concepts like monster card games in a fresh way. This book touched on a lot of emotional family aspects and personal histories as well as revealing depth to characters we already know - like Katia’s dark secret. This is my favorite series and I can’t wait to continue on in This Inevitable Ruin.

This series just keeps getting better and better, and I can't get enough! What started out as a bit of fun nonsense has taken such a deep and emotional turn, and I have become obsessed. I love reading about Carl and Donut. Their relationship is truly the highlight of this entire series thus far. In fact, all of the character relationships shine so brightly in this installment. I will say, however, that I didn't love this as much as I did The Butcher's Masquerade; I still had a lot of fun reading it. Samantha has officially become one of my favorite characters, and I am looking forward to seeing how Shi Maria comes into play. The ending of this book has left me with so many questions, and there are so many implications for the consequences of Shi Maria's final move. Same with the AI. It is completely losing its marbles and there are now even bigger consequences for its insanity, consequences that could impact more than just the crawl, but the universe at large, Every time that I think Matt Dinniman has expanded the world of crawl as far as it can go, he adds another level that I didn't see coming.

My one complaint about this book is that it felt like there were fewer stakes than in the previous. Also, the characters felt a bit isolated. The previous installment did such a great job at character interactions and raising the stakes while blending storylines and subplots, and I just don't think this one did it as strongly. That said, I still really enjoyed this book. On the one hand, I am sad that I didn't start reading this years ago. On the other hand, I am glad I waited this long so I could binge the whole thing. It's been two weeks since I started, and I am already heading to book 7. Matt Dinniman needs to drop book eight now!

Hilarious and surprisingly heartwarming. Carl and Donut are the perfect duo in this post alien apocalyptic world.

𝐓𝐢𝐭𝐥𝐞: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Sci-Fi Fantasy
𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: May 13, 2023
📖 832 pages

We're back on Earth (or an approximation of it) but its truly a ghost world, nothing more than a memory. Previously processed people appear as ghosts throughout, shadowing their last days as the crawlers navigate around them.

We finally got Carl's full backstory and it hurts! I love how Dinniman adds serious relationships and vices to his characters. I've grown to love so many of them! I laughed more times than I can count and cried in several scenes.

I was never a Magic the Gathering/Yu-Gi-Oh/Pokémon player but those are the vibes I get from the card game the crawlers play on this floor! It's a little complicated, but I think even if you don't fully follow the game dynamics the book was still the action packed hilarity I've come to expect from this series!!

I do want to say, as a Christian, one of the characters is straight disrespectful (sacrilegious) and it made me want to DNF. Thankfully, he was a minor character. I hope he doesn't make many more appearances because aside from that the series has been so great.

Thank you so much Berkeley Publishing, Ace, and NetGalley for the digital review copy!

M ⚠️: disrespectful character (sacrilegious and highly offensive), language, use of g**d****, gore/violence, emetophobia

The continuation of the adventures of Carl, Donut, and friends. It does not disappoint! Things are starting to get real.

Characters ~ I appreciate Carl and Donut. The extended cast of characters, and how they help them to grow and develop, are also fun, aggravating, and irritating in turns. I appreciate the NPCs as well, as they also lead to so much growth.

Plot ~ It's a video game and a shonen all in one. You know where you are being led, but not how you'll get there. It's both fun and comforting.

Worldbuilding ~ It would be so easy to fall back on tropes, but the author doesn't do that, which I greatly appreciate. This is a unique and different world with a slow buildup.

Writing ~ Pacing is important for a story. I think the author's writing keeps a pretty good pace. Sometimes we do get a bit bogged down in the details, but then it picks up again and all is well.

These are getting harder to read. Not because they're bad. Quite the opposite, actually. I love the characters so much. I love these books so much. They're getting hard to read because I know it's coming to an end and I hate to see them making the hard choices they have to make. Keep your eye on the pets in this one. I won't share why. Also, be prepared for the possible need for tissues. It should tell you something that these books have almost a 5 🌟 average on Goodreads with tens of thousands reviews. Read it!

This is going to sound strange, but this is almost like a comfort read for me. Yes, some of it is breaking my heart, but the humor is top notch, and it's so unrealistic that I don't have to think hard about how to avoid these scenarios. It's the first time in over a decade that I've wanted to re-read an entire series. That should tell you something!

The Bedlam Bride is a creepy but interesting story that mixes romance with mystery and horror. The book has a dark and eerie vibe that keeps you curious the whole time. I look forward to reading more books by him!

Thank you so much Berkley for the e-book!! This is by far my favorite book in the series so far. I’m going to call this the Christmas special book. I enjoyed the setting in Havana the most and I loved the characters we got to meet there. Especially the cat that Donut meets and has beef with. Speaking of Donut, it’s been really cool to see her grow as a character. I love her pop culture references. The Gossip Girl talk makes me laugh every time. I didn’t expect to fall in love with her as hard as I did. I also see a lot of growth in Carl. He’s really figuring out his stride. I also feel so bad for what he went through as a kid and you get to find out so much in this book. The note about Matt’s dad at the end made me very emotional too and you can tell he put a lot of heart into this book which is why it’s become my favorite.

This book also had its hilarious moments as usual and I loved all the puns. There were so many ridiculous and silly moments mixed with very heartfelt found family moments that worked so well. I was very nervous for the characters in this book, but I felt hopeful at the end. Can’t wait to dive into the next book, however it’s going to be bittersweet once I finish. I’m going to miss this series once I’m done I’m enjoying it so much!