varingblaarCarl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
Narrated by Jeff Hays
a performance to them
Spoiler warning: If you haven't listened to Carl's Doomsday Scenario, I suggest you do so before going any further. If this spoils it for you, it's not my fault.You have been warned.
Book two in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.
Now that most of the explanation of the game is done, we can focus on story. This floor of the dungeon feels like a fantasy world, like something a dungeon master would come up with. I guess that suits the theme. The Skyfowl are a pretty cool race, with their own political stuff going on, that gives the characters something to interact with besides just the "surviving and beating bosses" thing.
Oh but there's also the whole Undead Circus story with the clowns. Also baboons. From this whole story we learned two things. Firstly, the creators of the show can be bargained with. The showrunners don't want to lose their biggest draw, and as long as the potential solution is good "for the views" they'll let it happen. The other thing we learned, is that Signet's storyline will come back in a later book. I don't mind, the concept of using tattoo creatures like Pokémon is pretty cool.
It stands to reason as the dungeon becomes more difficult, the group has to take their tactics more seriously. In any video game you're not only leveling up your abilities, you're also practicing and getting better at actually playing the game. The fact that the group has callouts and prepared combos makes a big difference and allows for cinematic moments when it works.
Mongo
I don't know how I feel about Mongo, but I understand his purpose in the story. Donut being the loose cannon of the book was fine for the first book, but it would get old and predictable if it were to continue. Mongo is the new chaos generator. He also offers something for Donut to riff off, so Carl doesn't have to be the focus of her "crazy" all the time. He's also a completely different build, so it allows for new ways of solving problems. He does seem a little overpowered though...
The Voices
I didn't notice Carl's voice changing until it was mentioned to me and I went back to check. He seems less frantic and more collected. Now that the insane circumstances have settled into "this is my life now" and there's no immediate urgency, Carl has time to think about things and come up with a plan. He seems to be more mature than the intro of the first book had us believe, but because "everything was on fire" we didn't really have time to get to know him as a character until now. Donut also seems to speak softer with him now. They're definitely becoming more of a unit.
I have to give it to Jeff Hays (again). Mordecai is a different morphology but the moment he spoke I knew it was him, even with the different voice. Then on top of that, Jeff Hays plays the character with the "same but different" voice as drunk for a good bit. So in the narrator's head there's now a single voice with two "mods" on top of it, each influencing the voice in a particular way. This is crazy! Is there an award for best audiobook narrator? Because Jeff Hays wins
