Wizard at Large

Here we are: halfway through Terry Brooks' Magic Kingdom of Landover series! I honestly didn't remember Wizard at Large at all, so I was quite interested to see what happened.

This time around, Questor Thews has found a means to reverse the spell on Abernathy. Abernathy was turned into a Wheaten Terrier years ago by Questor, who was unable to change him back. But in order for the magic to work, he needs a catalyst: he asked Ben Holiday for the use of his medallion. But the spell goes awry, and Abernathy and the medallion change places for a magical bottle that contains a powerful demon (a darkling). Abernathy finds himself in Ben's world and in the home of Michel Ard Rhi, the ex-prince of Landover, the very man who Questor hid him from by changing him into a dog!

After the bottle is stolen by the G'home Gnomes, Ben and Willow ultimately end up going to Ben's world to try to track down Abernathy and the medallion while Questor and company continue trying to retrieve the bottle. Ben enlists the help of his former partner and good friend Miles Bennett to help find Abernathy and Michel Ard Rhi. Meanwhile Questor and company track the bottle to the Greensward, but when it is stolen again, and ends up in the hands of Nightshade, Questor decides he needs the help of Strabo to retrieve the others from Earth so they can deal with the demon once and for all.

The end of Wizard at Large is a lot of fun. First there's a ridiculous wizard battle between Questor Thews and Strabo, where Questor manages to hold his own through sheer luck. Then, just when things seem hopeless for Ben and the others (Willow is dying because she can't make her monthly change in our world, they've been detained by the police and Michel Ard Rhi is coming to charge them with the theft of the medallion), Questor comes flying in on Strabo and they escape back to Landover! Strabo is also all to happy to bring them to Nightshade, thinking he's going to watch Ben Holiday die at her hand (with the help of the demon).

But I didn't like how everything lead to that deus ex machina solution for Ben Holiday and company. They were trapped and could not get out of their circumstances. They tried a lot of different things and nearly succeed, but in the end it doesn't matter: they get caught and can't get away. It was only through the arrival of Strabo that they were able to escape. I know that the book was building to that moment (and it was, objectively, a lot of fun), but it felt so unsatisfying for their storyline.

I also found parts of this book a bit of a slog. There's a lot of chasing after things that everyone just keeps on missing (the bottle and the demon get away from Questor and company because they find the G'home Gnomes when they no longer have the bottle, then they track down the trolls who had it but the trolls killed each other, with the last one bringing it to the Lords of the Greensward, then the bottle is stolen from everyone by a completely unexpected random magical creature (a shadow wight, which had not been introduced in any way prior to this encounter), who tries to bring it to the River Master, but ends up bringing it to Nightshade after the Rivermaster uses it and decides he cannot resist its power after he uses the darkling to bring Willow's mother to him and almost kills her in the process), trying to escape from things, getting caught again (Abernathy gets away from Michel Ard Rhi with the help of a little girl, but ends up kidnapped again by him not long after getting away because he went to someone for help and they wanted to make some money off him because he's a real talking dog before helping). Ben and Willow go from one place to another with Willow quickly getting sicker and sicker - she does what she can to help, but she very nearly dies because she didn't make the change before going to Ben's world. It was only in the last 50-70 pages, where the wizard battle happens and Strabo crashes into the building to save everyone that things got fun and I wanted to keep reading.  

I originally gave this book 4/5 stars when I read it many years ago. I think it deserves about a 3.5/5 (and so I will leave the book at 4/5 stars for now) - I thought it was better than The Black Unicorn (and a lot more fun), but by no means amazing.

Dungeon Crawler Carl

I've been meaning to get to Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl for awhile now, but was also putting it off in case I get hooked because it's a fairly big series. But a friend lent me the book, so I decided to take a break from Landover to give it a read.

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, aliens have decided to mine the Earth for resources. They collapse all the buildings, killing anyone who was inside, and invite the survivors to enter into a newly created dungeon in Earth's interior. This all happened around 2am Pacific time, so most of the people from North America just died. But Carl, our protagonist, just happened to be outside in his underwear trying to get his ex-girlfriend's cat Donut out of a tree when it happened, so he grabbed the cat and made for the dungeon stairs trying to stay warm (and not really understanding what was happening). They quickly find themselves in a D&D-like dungeon where it is kill or be killed. The event is being televised live for the galaxy, and the participants (or "crawlers" as the event calls them) have been outfitted with a HUD-like interface (HUD=Heads Up Display - a common video-game term) in their heads and can level up their skills and abilities and gain loot. Over 12,000,000 crawlers entered the dungeon before the stairs closed, and within the first hour or so, that number is already down to about 10,000,000. The dungeon is deadly and the galaxy loves watching all the gory details (while also rooting for crawlers who manage to beat the odds). If anyone makes it to level 18, they will become the rightful ruler of what's left of the world. But no one has ever made it that far in one of these world dungeons before. So Carl and Donut (who quickly gains the ability to talk and becomes a proper crawler as well) are fighting to survive in this dungeon where the odds of surviving are incredibly low.

I enjoyed Carl and Donut a lot. Their interactions are a lot of fun. Donut is of course my favourite: she is a newly more intelligent house-cat, so while she knows stuff about the world, she's also learning rather like a child. Plus she's a cat: her outlook on life and what's happening is rather different. And of course she has full confidence that she will win and be properly crowned the rightful ruler of the Earth.

I found Carl to be an interesting character, too. He was a coastguard-man who worked as a technician, so he was in fairly good shape and knew a bit about brawling, which definitely came in handy when he first entered the dungeon. Plus he's played video games before and could fairly intuitively figure out the game interface. While he seems like a loner, he has a heart and tries to do the right thing when he can (though sometimes it's hard to decide what that right thing is, especially inside the dungeon). Plus the two of them genuinely care for each other (he was planning on selling all of his belongings in an effort to buy Donut off his ex). 

But the story itself is a fairly dark read. Yes, there's humour. But there's so much death. Everyone (including the mobs) are cogs in this big entertainment machine, so things that happen are quite dark. Like the Spanish woman who was changed by the game makers into a 15-foot monstrosity who was crying for help. Or the goblins who were killed as collateral damage when Carl threw a bomb into the boss room. So while I enjoyed large parts of the story, a lot of moments like that made me really sad, and I'm not sure that I want to read more of the series if it gets even darker (and the author says in the Acknowledgement at the end that it will get darker).