“Don’t gaslight me, Jesus.”
You would think that Dinniman would run out of new ways to keep this insane dungeon crawling adventure exciting at some point, but ooooh no, instead The Eye of the Bedlam Bride might just be the best and most refreshing instalment in the series yet.
What can I say that I haven’t already said before? This series just has absolutely zero business working as well as it does, and yet here we are. I think I accepted around book 3 that I honestly couldn’t give a single flying fuck about the big action set-pieces and will never be able to wrap my head around the ridiculously complicated plans that Carl comes up with to cheat the system, but somehow Dinniman managed to get me so invested in the characters that I am along for the wild ride anyway.
And honestly, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride struck the perfect balance between the wild action, inventive world building and quiet character moments for me, which is exactly why this instalment just had me completely hooked the entire way through. For some reason, the combination of the simulated Earth setting (with the memory ghosts… brutal) in combination with the Yu-Gi-Oh! style card game system worked surprisingly well for me, and I loved seeing what type of crazy new character types Dinniman came up with for this card game (Uzi Jezus is a hoot and a half!!). Oh and we got Xmas shenanigans and lots of Gossip Girl and The Vampire Diaries talk (bless Donut), which just had my heart leaping with joy despite all the utter chaos going on.
Now, while there’s still plenty of zany, gory, goofy and charmingly cringy humour, I also think it’s not fair to call this a ‘fun escapist adventure’ anymore at this point. The emotional weight and thematic depth of the events unfolding is beyond anything I could ever have imagined, and I found myself insanely anxious and even choked up multiple times throughout this instalment. I especially enjoyed that we got to a peek into the backstories of Carl, Odette and Mordecai, which were all full of hard-hitting revelations.
Also, can we talk about the character development of the AI? Yes, you heard that right, the fucking AI absolutely stole the show here, and I loved seeing the absolute madness that unfolded as it started to take more and more control. And then the epilogue with the wider world implications… WICKED!! Everything is just going to utter shit and I am so here for the chaos; who knew that a LitRPG adventure could have such high stakes?!
If you have enjoyed the DCC series up to this point, I seriously can’t see how you wouldn’t adore The Eye of the Bedlam Bride as well. It’s got everything that makes this series so spectacular, done to absolute perfection. I am so excited and so nervous to see what is to come on the next floor; Dinniman better have been working on his pull-ups, because the bar is set SO high. Bring. It. On.
