Carl’s Doomsday Scenario – Matt Dinniman – Episode 122

The Buddies strapped in for book 2 (or some may say book 1.5) of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series with Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman. While this book may have not advanced the story too much, the Buddies had a good time reading and got into chatting about, AIM chatting, binge reading, and being less intelligent and less sensitive is a good thing. So join us as we reconnect with our good buddies Carl, Princess Donut, and Mordecai.

Intro/Book Report (0:00-4:18)

Stock Up/Down (4:08-27:51)

Favorite Scene/Character (34:41-32:45)

Love/Hate (32:46-36:53)

Conclusion (36:54-40:08)

 

NEXT BOOK: Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins

Alrighty. Welcome to Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with the man who seeks out adults and children alike to dazzle and entertain. And by dazzle and entertain, I mean, devour the flesh from their bones and use their remains as armor. Keith, what’s up, buddy?

No comment on that. I’ll have my lawyer address those, the allegations. I won’t speak on that. I think that was a description of the car suit, like crazy bat things, or lemurs maybe. I don’t know.

Either way, getting ahead of ourselves. Here at the buddy book club, we’re breaking down some best sellers. And this week, we’ll be discussing Carl’s doomsday scenario, Matt Deneman’s sequel to dungeon crawler Carl. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read, reach out to us in any past episodes. You can visit our website, buddybookclub.com or send us a message on x or Instagram.

It’s, the handle is Buddy Book Club Podcast. You can list those, iTunes, Spotify, wherever you podcast, please download. Give us a five star review, please, and thank you. Follow us on some social channels. Like I said, Keith, Carl’s doomsday scenarios, 4.56 on Goodreads, I think.

Pretty, pretty high. We had read Dungeon Crawler Carl, and we both were very pleasantly surprised, I would say. Was that I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, but yeah. Okay. And normally when it comes to series, we will read one and then we go on to a different book.

It’s just kinda the way things have worked out for us here at the Putty Book Club. I don’t know why. We have finished some. Like Mistborn trilogy, we finished and, obviously, the Harry Potter series and, Red Rising. But, yeah, we wanted to and I think it was me I kinda said, let’s just let’s just keep going with this.

And I think mostly it was because the way that dungeon crawler Karl ended with it didn’t really end. It was just kind of it seemed like it just stopped in the middle of the story, which I was fine with at the time and I’m still fine with, but I’m hence, why we’re here with, Carl’s doomsday scenario. Before we get into our standard categories, I’ll give you the floor and you can go ahead with your book report. Carl’s doomsday scenario continues Carl and Donut’s journey onto the Third Floor. Now we had a bunch of questions after book one d, man.

We were excited the world opened up a bit more, get a peek behind the curtains. Did any of those questions get answered? No. We pulled back the curtains to reveal more curtains. I call this book 1.5, not book two, because it was more of like an episode in a TV show.

You get the same people kind of there. You get kind of a side quest, things like that. Now, did that mean it’s boring or unenjoyable? No. It was still a fun quick read.

I’m still rooting for our heroes, still chuckling at times, still asking questions like, who would I pick if I had to change my class? And what would I change my race, easy d man, if given the option? I think you just need to change your expectations going into this. Your settings and your gameplay from kill kill kill to maim maim and then you’ll kind of appreciate it or understand a bit more. Oh, set phasers to stun.

Yeah. I, I like that. I think that’s, that’s an a minus a minus book report. Because I think it encapsulates the feelings I had, so maybe that’s all I’m doing is I’m just, like, happy because it’s, you know, you feel the same way I do about it. And it’s funny because I use the same analogy in my head when I was thinking about this book, was that it reminded me of an episode of a, like, a cartoon animated series or something like that, like a superhero show where Lois and Clark.

Wow. Oh my god. Don’t get me started on that show. A side episode without who’s the bad guy? The bald head guy?

Luke Lex Luther? Yeah. Without him in it as the bad guy, and he’d like, there’s no story advancement. It’s just like a story. Exactly.

It’s it’s did you watch Saturday morning cartoons as a kid? Were you big Saturday morning cartoons guys? Of course. Great show. Yeah.

So I was big into that. I was big into the superhero stuff naturally. We’ve already talked about X Men time and time again. But, you know, in that X Men show that we both loved, there were moments where the overarching storyline was advanced and those were great episodes. And then there were also episodes in there where it was like a one off bad guy and some little, episodes in there where it was like a one off bad guy and some little thing happened that had nothing to do with the rest of the story, and even that might have been its own quick little story arc.

And that’s kind of how this book felt. Well, with that, let’s get into some stock up, stock down. Keith, stock up. Carl’s doomsday scenario. What do you got?

Well, not to beat a dead horse here and, Continue. But Sammy Walken, sophomore season at Clemson Oh. Very specific stock up. Very specific stock up here. But Sammy came in and had an incredible freshman year, set the the world on fire at Clemson.

Un unbelievable. People are like, if he were I remember them saying if he were going to the draft, he’d be the number one receiver taken probably a top five pick as a freshman. Second season, his sophomore season, he hit the sophomore slump. And that is the first time I heard that term. But it’s a very common thing after, like, a big first appearance to the the second time you see them.

You’re kind of expecting it to be magnified and more. Yeah. It’s a temptation to change. Yeah. And that’s kind of what happened here and I just wanted to point that out like there’s definitely that like, alright well this is gonna be incredible now.

Like every single book from here on out it’s gonna get better and better and sometimes you hit that sophomore slump. Even, you know, Harry Potter, a lot of people said the second book. Yeah. People say that too. And I was reading the Reddit forums, and most people were were agreeing that the second book was one of the weakest ones, which is a little disappointing.

I almost wish we skipped this and went to write to the third book now. Well, I don’t think so. I I never wanna I mean, I hate skipping things. I feel like I’ve just missed something or whatever the case is. Oh, also The Wire second season?

Dude. I could’ve done anything. My stock up. That’s my first stock up. Yeah.

How dare you? Oh, you’re really in my head. You got the brain parasite from the ice cream cone that Carl was licking. Yeah. So I guess I’ll just jump into which I agree with you, but my first stock up is The Wire season two.

And it’s on it’s on two fronts here, which is one being many people view it as the worst Wire season, which I will disagree. I think it’s very good, but I don’t it’s hard for me to pick a worst. So I’m just gonna say I liked it. But it’s also important because, for those that don’t remember, it’s the dead hooker season. And what do we get in Carl’s doomsday scenario?

But dead hookers. It’s pretty much the main plot line of Carl’s doomsday scenario. They just took the wire and put it into, some lit RPG. That storyline, by the way, I didn’t think it was that great, or maybe it was just a little confusing for me. It’s the, you know, Gum Gum is the orc or whatnot, and she keeps trying to get Carl and Donut to take the quest, which they don’t do until she’s murdered.

And it involves the town magistrate, his secretary, like Miss Quill, and her husband Xerox or something. I don’t know. And then it was like a TV show that’s producers behind? I don’t know what’s going on with the other one. This one, there’s eventually an anchorman type battle between the two hundred and first security group mages and Eunice the pregnant dwarf, the city guards, Ricky Joe, and Carl’s crew where, like, Mongo eats the kid’s arm and the kid’s, like, give me my arm back.

It was it was all very condensed. There’s a lot going on there. Now that you’re saying it, I’m like, I do remember this, but I also don’t don’t remember this at all. What’s going on? And then, you know, they find the rest of the dead headless hookers, I guess, in some basement and remix, which creates a new quest, Fools Who Broke the Glass and everything blows up but Karl creates and then gains a doomsday scenario which is basically like this explosion necklace thing but in a box.

I don’t know. It was I’m glad you summarized that because I yeah. And I’m not even sure that’s what happened. That’s just Yeah. Quick jots down as I’m trying to figure it out in my own head.

So it wasn’t a necklace. It was a crystal. But either way, I was wondering where the Carl’s doomsday scenario came in. It came in at the end with this thing, which presumably will, down the road, be something that he uses because it’s pretty much just a bomb. You know?

It’s a bomb that can blow up an entire city or whatever the case is. So maybe throws that down to whoever that horse god is that he’s looking like he’s gonna fight at some point or potentially get in trouble with, throws that down his his throat. But, yeah, I just think that that there’s pretty much two plot lines going on in this book. We’ll get to the other one, but I feel like this was pretty much the main one. And, although it was entertaining, it by no means pushed our overarching narrative any further, and it was just seemingly an episode of a TV show like we talked about.

What else do you have for stock up? Instant sober potions stock up. Mhmm. So Mordecai would just down this and just be back to normal, which to me sounds like a pretty useful tool. I mean, just imagine the perfect example would be, like, a Monday national championship basketball championship that just happened.

You go out with the boys. You have 10 beers at the bar. You go to your car. You down this little thing and you hop in your car. No hangover.

You’re not drunk anymore. You go back home and, you you start the next day. I mean, it sounds incredible. Right? Like, you can have a good time, get lit, have no repercussions.

The only problem where I find it is I think society would just stop if that happened. It’d be like, Family Guy where the they’re like, this is what Ireland was like before whiskey was invented. Have you seen that clip? That’s, like, my favorite clip. Yeah.

I think about it. That’s what I think would happen. So I think it’s a stock up because I would love it, but at at the same time, society would not exist if it were a real thing because 90% of the time, people would be drunk. Yeah. I don’t think it would be a good thing for society.

I 1000% agree with you. But I too would love to have it because one of the things I very much enjoy is having a good buzz on, and I’m not encouraging people to go around and, you know, be drinking all the time. But to have a good buzz on it, especially like in the summer when you’re maybe golfing with friends or at the beach or you go out for a nice long meal and you wanna have that third cocktail. Like, yeah, I wanna do that. But one thing I don’t support and, am not interested in taking part in is drinking and driving.

Big anti on that that front. So I often, tend to be the the driver in the household. So, you know, yeah, I’ll go and have a drink, but that’s about it. And sometimes you just wanna get that that tasteful buzz on. I mean, I’m even thinking I’m going to golf with some buddies in a couple weeks weeks, and it’s, like, an 8AM tee time.

I don’t golf, so I’m going But you need swing juice. So, yeah, I gotta get my swing juice in, but it’s an 8AM tee time. And then we’re gonna go out afterwards, like, to his house or whatever the case is, have a barbecue, and I gotta drive an hour back. So I’m like, shoot. You know?

I I can’t, I can’t be overdoing it. But if I had this, this little Mordecai potion, I’d be I’d be all about it. It reminds me of, fat free yogurt in, Seinfeld. Oh, yeah. You you need the fat in there.

Otherwise, everyone just eat it all that yeah. You need that. Like, you know, there needs to be consequences for your actions, unfortunately, which sucks. But Yeah. It’s so funny that fat free just the way that we have as a society decided culture arcs or whatever because it used to be fat free was so important, but really they just load up on all the sugar.

And so it’s it’s just and sugar just turns into fat in your body, so it doesn’t make a difference. And then it became It just doesn’t make a difference. Right? Like, fat is, like, fat is also fat is a thing, and then it’s also like, you point it and say, there’s fat on my me. Right?

Like, so that’s I wonder if it’s a language thing. Yeah. Exactly. Those aren’t the same thing. If you you’re you eating fat, yes, will make you fat, but you eating sugar will also make you fat.

Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s the problem is, like, there’s a there is fats and then there is you’re getting, you know, fat. Yeah. Yeah. But then it’s funny because then it swung the other way where it was, like, the paleo diet or Atkins or whatnot, which was basically, oh, have, like, t bone steaks with butter, and you should just be eating sticks of butter. It’s like, how would you just just eat people.

Just chill. I used to sell, bulletproof coffee, which is butter in your coffee or whatever. Have you heard that? I think so, but that sounds disgusting. It’s butter and coffee?

It’s, like, basically for people that are that don’t wanna stay in ketosis or whatever it’s called. Oh, yeah. It’s keto diet thing. Yeah. Sounds terrible.

Because also a side effect of ketosis is you get halitosis, which is when you have terrible breath, and then you have coffee breath too. So you get coffee, butter, bad breath. Sounds honestly And you get ticker chits all the time too. I mean, yeah. It sounds good.

Yeah. Yeah. But speaking about drinking, my last stock up was, was dirty Shirley’s, which is, that we love. Yeah. That was, Princess Donuts drink.

And it it really is just a primo drink, and I applaud Princess Donut for her taste and sensibility. That’s really all I had to say on the subject. For those that aren’t aware, obviously, a Dirty Shirley is just a Shirley Temple with a little vodka in it. I posted on TikTok. Remember I told you that?

What was it called? Oh, the one you made? Yeah. Yeah. I rebranded it.

And someone just said, is this just a Dirty Shirley that’s weak? And I said, yeah. That’s right. Pink pony. Oh, pink pony.

Stockdown. What do you got? Stockdown, Slack slash a I m. Okay. I I remember the good old days of, a I m where where you would get on, you know, it’s Thursday night, and you were like, boys, we got a big weekend coming up.

You know, let’s get some n 64 going, maybe some James Bond, double o seven, or some, Mario Kart, Goldeneye. You know, it was just like the the peak time and then you would obviously, like, at least I would just wait until that your crush comes on and just see her name there. Not say one word to her. Just hope maybe she’ll reach out to you. Yeah.

And then that one time that you actually reach out to her and you say something, the conversation goes nowhere and you’d never talk to them again. Yeah. It’s like, hey That was just the peak. That was the peak of that time of year. You know what I mean?

So, yeah. But, the reason I bring that up, not just to bring up how fucking devastating that was for me, is I didn’t really like the fact that now that in book two that I thought about it is, like, they’re sharing all these secrets, especially talking about Mordecai behind his back in the chat. Like, the whole point of a reality TV show is that you create the drama by exposing these things. So the fact that they allow a chat function, it seems to defeat the whole purpose. And I didn’t like that they were able to, like you should have to, you know, orate whatever you’re you’re you’re planning.

It it doesn’t really make sense for an audience to be like, they’re secretly talking and not you know, directly, they would never have to say anything out loud. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, it’s an it’s a necessary part of the book because otherwise and it’s one of the things that we’re gonna discuss, I’m sure, in our in our next book, The Hunger Games one we read. Because if there’s this like the Borrent Corporation or whoever’s running the games is listening in on everything you’re saying, you need to have some sort of ability to discuss tactics outside of their purview.

So, I agree with you, but I also disagree with you because I think it is an important part of Carl and Donut’s ability to figure out this whole Mordecai thing. And obviously, him being their manager now, or Donut’s manager specifically, Mhmm. Is going to play a role down the road because that was a big thing that Odellyn or whatever that that that other person’s name is. I can’t remember what her name is. But that was a big part of she said, hey.

Make sure you find a a class with this manager capability because you’re gonna need it. I remember when we got when I got AIM at least and obviously dial up Internet. You know, we’re in our late thirties, so we were kinda like the primo I don’t know. For me, it was almost like the perfect age group to get it where we were early teenagers and the number one best part of it, in my opinion, was, like you said, being able to set up hangouts with your buddies without having to call their house and have that awkward moment with their mom or dad where you’d be like, hey. Is is is Mike there?

And they’d say, who’s this? And she’d say, it’s Dylan. It’s like, let me find out. It’s like, do they hate me? Do they not hate me?

I don’t I don’t know. Ever get that voice they answer and, like, you’re calling again? Jesus Christ. Yeah. I’ve always always had that.

Before they’d say, he might be back in an hour, like, call back. And I’m like, oh, that’s exactly what I don’t wanna do. I don’t wanna do this again. And you call back, they’re still not back yet. Are you still calling?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My bad. Or or my buddy Hayato, who you know, he’s Japanese, and his grandmother was always at home, and she only speaks Japanese.

So you’d call and be like, is Hayato there? And you She was pretending she didn’t speak English. That was a % what was going on this whole time. She’s like, I speak perfect English, but I’m not dealing with this kid. Bubba is a saint.

My handle was Dill, you know, nickname. Sixty nine four twenty, obviously. Yeah. No. Dill.

And then my first initial of my last name, which is o and seventeen. So it was dill o seventeen seventeen, but then you just have that forever. So I’m in high school, and everyone’s like, what’s up, dildo seventeen? And I’m like, god dang it. I had no idea about any of this.

I was just dillo, and you just put a d right in there, and it becomes dildo. Goddamn it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s another cross eyed bear. Thank god we’ve moved on to Not not. I know that. That’s changed. Well, sorry.

Here we are. My first stock down is binge reading. So we live in a binge society, and I mean that in a different way than, you know, they do in my six hundred pound life. But we just love bingeable media. And and I’m a victim of it myself.

You know, I’m currently binging White Lotus instead of starting Last of Us, even though, you know, I’m not even really a fan of White Lotus. I’m just watching it and Mhmm. Because it’s like, well, I started it, so I might as well finish it. Even though I know I have Last of Us, which I loved, the first season, sitting there waiting for me, I just can’t stand the idea of watching one episode Yeah. And then having to wait.

And we, at our house, Caroline had never seen Game of Thrones, so we just binged that, and it was my second watch of it. But as I’m watching it and we’re enjoying it thoroughly, she’s loving it, I’m having to explain to her how we had, like, to wait weeks between, you know or between episode, you had to wait a week, but then between seasons, you had to wait a year. And in between these times, everyone’s shooting around ideas and, you know That was the best part. Screen. Yes.

It’s like you’d come to the office and you’d be spit you know, shooting the shit at the water cooler. Hey. What do you think about this? What do you think about that? Did you see this article or this screen grab?

So those were, like, the fun parts, but, unfortunately, it feels like we don’t we don’t have that anymore. But, back to why this has been you know, binge reading is a stock down for me, because I’m just not sure Dungeon Crawler Carla, this series, is really conducive to binge reading. I think that was our problem here with it because we went so quickly from Dungeon Crawler Karl into Karl’s doomsday scenario that and we love the characters. We love the the top two, but I didn’t miss them enough. I think we needed to miss them more before rejoining the quest.

Because we had just spent so much time with them and then we did this, I liked it a lot less than I think I would if we kinda forgot about it for a bit and then revisited this summer when it’s more this is more of a, oh, I could listen to this at the beach and have a really good time. Mhmm. But because we were just there and then this was such a downgrade, that’s, you know, kinda why I feel like we feel this way about the doomsday scenario. Yeah. That’s a really good point.

You gotta miss the characters that, you know, to appreciate them a little bit. Yeah. It’s the sun and the rain, you know, kinda thing. It does bring me to my to I wanted to bring up Andor because the new season’s coming out. Oh, oh, is it?

There’s a new season? Yeah. I’m debating whether I should hold off. Season one was probably the pound found the best season one I’ve ever seen of a show. Because I also went in thinking I I was like, I’m not gonna like this show.

I’m planning not to like it, and it amazing. And then I rewatched it being like, it wasn’t that good. I gotta rewatch it. Amazing again. I was like, I will I will be out to it again right now.

You know, it’s that that’s how good I think it was. Every Star Wars spin off I found to be very much blah. I think the best was besides Andor, was Mandalorian, but Mandalorian was more of, like, Carl’s doomsday scenario where it was a bunch of these, like, episodes that were, like, a mix of there were a mix of Carl’s doomsday scenario and Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules, where it’s like him finding some people that need help, him helping them, and then getting a plate for his armor and moving on. So, you know, it was fine. Where Andor felt like that was just a good story that happened to take place in the Star Wars universe.

Yeah. Which is exactly what they need. I don’t know why they try to do anything but that. My next stock down is circuses. Man, they’re pretty it’s pretty low stock.

Is it? You never liked circus? Well, it’s weird because I feel like almost every single person is afraid of or does not like clowns. So the fact that they grew to such attention, I don’t know who is liking them. You know what I mean?

Yeah. A clown is usually like what do they call it? Like the warm up guy or whatever the case is? The Opener? The yeah.

The opener. But I’m thinking of the guy who goes on, like, the late show and he warms up the audience. Oh. That kinda thing. It’s kinda like that’s what a clown does at a circus before you get to the the trapeze people and the animals that are abused and stuff like that.

So the the the clown does crowd work. Yeah. They used to have the Big Apple Circus in Boston that came around that I remember it being quite wonderful, but that was before we knew about all the abuse of animals and stuff that we’re not really big fans of over here. But in general, I don’t really get the other storyline in Carl’s doomsday scenario that we haven’t talked about yet was the Grimaldi’s Traveling Circus storyline. It’s part of the show must go on quest and the vengeance of the daughter, which is the serialized TV show that you were talking about.

I didn’t really follow it. How I understand this quest, the world that is Carl’s doomsday scenario is there was a creature, Scolopendra, that blew up a volcano or something and transformed all the living creatures, including most of Grimaldi’s Circus, but not Tsarina. So she attacks the circus every night in an attempt to kill the ringmaster, like Grimaldi the ringmaster, But then Carl ends up eating some parasitic ice cream like we talked about that thing, freed Grimaldi from the parasites, and he and Sarina, I think, they fell back in love and then went down to the sixth level. And that gives Carl the ability to strike some TV deal or I don’t know. Yeah.

I don’t know. It was it was entertaining at the time, but also I don’t understand what was happening. Did you, like, write all this stuff down, or did you find some, like, summary? Because I was, like, trying to find summaries because I was like, I don’t remember or, like, understand what was really going on while I was reading it. So I’m glad you’re able to summarize it.

I just re read my notes thing on my app, and I go scolopendra question mark. That makes sense. But, But, yeah, there’s, like, moldy lions and stuff. The fights and were fun. Like I said, it just Yeah.

Yeah. They found it it was a little harder to follow, I felt. Agreed. Even though you summarizing it, I’m like, wait. What?

I don’t even think that summary is right. If we had listeners that No. No. But, I mean, that loved this book, they would probably say, Dylan doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. Here’s what actually the whole thing was about and would probably make it sound, like, a lot more sensical.

But so circus has stocked down. Did you have any other stock downs? Yeah. Last one, emotional intelligence stock down. Oh.

What is emotional intelligence, Keith? I’m not really sure, but, I’m gonna talk about it. I would think that if we met an advanced society, one that’s, like, far superior technologically, that data also have significantly higher emotional intelligence and, like, the thought of or the concept of an insult would not even be in their vocabulary. They’d be like, what do you mean? Like, I don’t understand how why why would a word affect my feelings and or, like, my rational decision making.

Right? That’s what I would think. But in this book, we see, like, these superior alien races that are the most sensitive people ever. They’re, like, in their feelings at all times. Like, you say one bad word about them, and they’re ready to destroy a a planet.

And it’s like Who are you talking about specifically, though? Are you talking about NPCs in the game? No. The like, the, like, the political meeting there where they, like, shoot the rocket at the the ship there and blow up, the singer instead of Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. The uncle to the guy or the father to the guy that he had done Yeah. The maestro maestro. Yeah. They’re they’re supposed to be smart, like and then the same thing as, like, the Boring company.

You can’t say one bad word about them. Otherwise, everyone’s gonna know and everyone’s gonna freak out and like, you know, they’re not like all these politics stuff that you would think that wouldn’t really as you get advanced intelligence, you wouldn’t really affect things. But apparently, it does and I was thinking about it like, you you talk to a pig and call a pig ugly, it doesn’t care. Mhmm. But you tell call someone of us ugly, you’d get upset.

So I think the more advanced intelligence level, the more sensitive you get. I think that’s what it becomes which is disappointing. But maybe Matty Deneman here is on to something. Yeah. Who would have thunk that, like, the more frontal lobe you have, the more frontal lobe things you actually you actually get affected by.

As someone that’s less intelligent, I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m not gonna be upset that you’re trying to insult me clearly because I’m less intelligent. That’s a that’s a good way to think of it from now on. Yeah. If you don’t take things personally, it’s, less actually, no. That’s negative.

Damn it. Yeah. You can’t insult The Rock. I’m gonna go with my theory that you’re smarter. I’m smarter because I don’t understand when you’re making fun of me.

Yeah. You’re more you’re more emotionally intelligent. That’s for sure. Yes. Okay.

Thank you. There is a book on emotional intelligence. I can’t I think it’s called emotional intelligence. What it means? I read the book, and that was a long time ago.

But it’s pretty much just about understanding people’s feelings, right, and being able to empathize. Every single one of the these new self help books are about that. Yeah. It’s funny when you run into people who just don’t have that, like neurotypical people being, you know like, my mom’s a good example. Right.

Typical. What the She’s great at, like, understanding people’s emotions or whatever, but there’s neurotypical. You come on. You don’t watch Love on the Spectrum, bro? It’s a great show.

Great, great show. Gotcha. Great. Because it’s a lot about emotions and, like, understanding how to read people’s emotions, and they have to work at it a lot more than us neuro neurotypical folks. And it’s, but they love so much deeper than we ever could, so that’s nice.

It’s it’s my number one feel good show. It’s also there’s there’s a lot of cringe parts just because I have that internal you know, I can’t watch that I can’t watch people kiss and stuff like that, so it just makes me uncomfortable in general. So it’s good because it gets all the emotions flowing. But, yeah, I guess we’ll go read the book. We’ll both go read it, but we won’t do it on the Bunny O’Koo book club.

That’s for sure. What about favorite characters? Did you have a favorite character in this one? I feel like we didn’t, I mean, we had characters, but there are more bit type characters. Sarina Signet, she’s the elite half Naiad, half High Elf Summoner that gives Carl a full erection.

Featherfall, the town magistrate, missus Quill, eventually her husband, Remax, or whatever, a bunch of other bit people like Gum Gum and whatnot. I assume you didn’t really pick anyone out. But No. I kinda more wanted to call out Katia or Katia. Was that the the I didn’t understand what it who she was or why she was there.

They’re like, yeah. Yeah. Just take this random person on. She’s a shape shifter. And I was like, who?

And they’re like, yeah. Yeah. And then she’s like, her face is messed up. I don’t like, who is this person? Why?

So I was just part of the, like, Amazonian woman’s, group, her clan or whatnot, but got separated somehow and or was told to go find out Carl find Carl and Donut, and they’re gonna help her level up, I think, was the was the vibe that was going on. But Yeah. I just didn’t understand the motives. I didn’t understand I feel like bringing someone into your party is pretty sacred. And they’re just like Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You didn’t Yeah. She didn’t exactly. And she didn’t have much of a personality either.

Like, there wasn’t really I think we, like, got introduced to her for, like, a minute and they’re like, good luck with your face shifting. And then that was it. I thought there was just a weird unless there’s some big reveal coming later for her or something. I didn’t understand what was her purpose. I don’t know.

Did you have did you understand it? No. I didn’t either. I I I don’t know how they all got intertwined really, or I can’t remember. I’m sure it was said, but their goal was to show, like, they met with the They met the Amazonian woman, and she She’s like, just take this person on, and they’re like, okay.

That’s it? Yeah. Why didn’t she take her on? Or Yeah. How did they end up in her party?

Yeah. I guess they weren’t close in the game or whatever she Yeah. Like, the world got bigger or something along those lines. I don’t know. Yeah.

That’d be That was more my my question. Yeah. I think Mordecai probably took it for me just because we get more Mordecai in this one, and I liked the the manager wrinkle. Like I said, it’s gonna evolve down the road likely. The rest of the characters, they did bit parts with brief story arcs.

Not really that interesting. We did have Donut evolve a bit here as well with her heart starting to show, you know, her willingness to save the NPCs after Gumdum dies. She was like, alright, we’re doing this quest, even though Mordecai said not to. So Princess Donut, and I mean this in the nicest way, was like a cold hearted bitch, and it seems like her heart is warming. So I appreciate that.

And Carl continues to be, you know, a guy with a big moral compass who’s a who’s a great main character. So yeah. I do like that they were like, Gary, we obviously are gonna go help that person. We we both knew that. Like, that was great.

Yeah. I thought that was good. Favorite part of this one? Yeah. I mentioned that that TV show, like, the political drama.

Like, that’s when I was like, alright. We’re kinda starting to get somewhere now. I kinda wanna the world to open up. And we’ll talk about this in the next book. But, like, I feel like there’s a rule that I’m starting to establish of the the Empire Strikes Back or, like, the Hoth rule for sequels Mhmm.

Where if you just do the same thing over and over, Empire Strikes Back was so good because you went from this perfect formula of here’s a guy that learns out he’s a Jedi. You could have just gone back to his own planet, had some story there of, like, the same exact thing and then a fight with Darth Vader at the end. Instead, it opens up. It becomes you’re you’re in a half of a sudden. You’re a completely opposite planet.

Yeah. You’re you get introduced to a new bad guy, the emperor. You find this big twist with the his dad being it’s like this there’s like 10 different variables got thrown into there instead of just doing the same formula. Because most people like you have a successful first movie or book just do the same exact thing. Yeah.

We got we got the money, rinse, repeat. Especially when you’re, you know, George Lucas and you’re doing this on it kind of his first massive I mean, it was his first massive hit. And it was a risk to go back and and, you know, continue his space opera and opening up with Hoth, which is so much different than Tatooine. So, you know, we’re talking about desert planet to this snow fortress. And you meet the rebellion.

Like, you’d like it opened up so much stuff that, like, it became that’s the reason why I love fantasy is because You get to zoom out. It’s Yeah. It’s the zoom in started it off, which gives us the which makes us fall in love yeah. Fall in love with these characters, and we’re then invested in these characters. And we know they have a piece in the overarching thing, but we don’t necessarily know how big it is.

And then all of a sudden, that second one comes out and you realize, oh my god, there’s so many moving parts in here. Our main character is just an ant in this giant yard of a story. And so, yeah, I I agree with you. Once we start getting a taste of that where it’s like there’s all these there’s all this political stuff at play and all these different, races and, you know, people get offended by different things. I was like, oh, this is sick.

But then we only got a taste of that. So that was my favorite part of the scene. But what about you? The race and class choosing, it’s just always fun to see what’s the what the options are and how they make those decision. You know, pro Carl goes for a primal compensated anarchist, which those are interesting his options there.

And the primal piece, I think, is the most interesting because they are supposedly some mysterious ancient alien race. So I feel like we’re gonna learn a lot more about that down the road. And princess Donut chooses a cat naturally, and a former child actress, which hers were pretty funny, I thought, too. Like, those that part was the same funny as it was interesting and exciting to see what they choose because for me, I mean, even when it came to Pokemon where you’re choosing, you know, water, fire, earth. I think that’s what it was.

Right? What’s Bulbasaur? I don’t know. Either way. I didn’t do Pokemon.

Oh, really? You didn’t do that? Yeah. Even then, it was tough for me to you know, because you make these decisions feel so I don’t know. It seems so permanent when you’re playing this game.

You know you’re gonna invest a hundred and fifty hours in it. And so, like, making these decisions in a game, even when I’m playing Gauntlet Legends, it’s like, oh, do I wanna be a mage? Do I wanna be a warrior? Do I wanna be this? So, I always find that to be fun because it’s it’s it’s a little stressful to decide to pick what you wanna be for the whole time.

I know you played DOTA, but you can always just, like, switch. Right? It’s like one game you could be this and then you can be that. Like I said, it’s like more of like a chess game. Like, each game is Yeah.

So you’re like, oh, I’m playing as the rook. I’m playing as the bishop. Yeah. And it’s not like you’re like, this is my profile. Because, like, World of Warcraft is where probably what you’re thinking.

It was like, I’m a tank, and that’s it. I’m gonna be that for the rest of, you know, the next hundred hours I play this. Yeah. Exactly. What about Love Hates?

What’d you love? I mean, I I think I mentioned it at the the top but it’s still a fun book. You know, it’s a quick read. You know, there’s no point did I have what you get a lot with a lot of books is like the rolling eye moment or like the this is way too long or like get to something point. It’s just fun being in the world.

I know that it was a little bit more confusing and I did wish there was a more story, or like plot progression. But it’s still overall just, it’s like you could be doing a lot lot worse. That’s for sure. Yep. Quick quick read.

Fun read. I love personally, I love the shift of the look of the dungeon. So in the training levels, which is the dungeon crawler, Karl, we get what we would think of as a dungeon. You know, they’re in a dungeon. And in this book, now they’re out of the training levels, we move to this over city which feels more like a medieval world than, like, an actual dungeon, and it has a much more of an open world concept where they can pretty much decide I know, obviously, in the dungeon, they can decide where they wanna go, but it’s open world.

So it’s like there’s a town over here, there’s a town over there, there’s you know, you can kind of release yourself into this world and and try to figure it out. So I like the look of this world. I didn’t quite understand the whole volcano situation, like it’s sitting on top of a volcano and so the next level is gonna be down into the volcano, I guess. I don’t know. Reminded me of Mario 64 when you have to jump into the volcano.

But outside of that, I thought the world was cool. I was into it. I thought all the new creatures were fun and well thought out. I guess, you know, we’ll just roll into hates because my only hate was that I was a bit confused at times or I it seemed a little thrown together. Mhmm.

Yeah. I think we we already kind of gone over all the hates. Yeah. It’s also I think he wrote this as probably, like, a blog or, you know, kinda similar to what, Yeah. Yeah.

For The Martian, Andy Weir? The Martian. Yeah. Andy Weir did where it’s like, oh, now I gotta put these stuff together. Like, it it wasn’t necessarily meant to be a a clean book.

Yeah. It seems like a bridge book. It’s a bridge book. One a. Yeah.

1.5. One point five like you said before. Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I I think that I think that’s kind of it. So we don’t necessarily even need to do, like, who the book’s for because it’s the for the same people that we talked about for for Dungeon, Carl, or Carl. But what would you give it we’re going out of five now. Goodreads five. How many buddies out of a Goodreads five would you give it?

Yeah. I’d give it a 3.5. So I think it’s I think it’s, like, middle of the road. That’s what I would say. You know, like, again, it’s there’s enjoyable parts, but I wouldn’t necessarily say, oh, this is the you know, you have to read this book.

So 3.5, I think, is fair. What about you? Yeah. Like, I wanna say three, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad by any means. That’s exactly what I was saying.

I was like, my three is, like, almost is like a flip a coin to whether you read it. 3.5, like, gives that little edge. That’s why I decided to put it up. Yeah. But if someone said, hey.

I’m gonna get into the Judge of Karl Karl series, but I don’t have a ton of time. Can I skip two? You would say yes. Yeah. So I mean, I don’t know what book three entails.

Like, I don’t know if we there’s a a couple of breadcrumbs that you needed to know here, but for at least what my thoughts would be yes. Or should I read can I read the Wikipedia page and be fine? Yeah. I was wondering if there was more Wikipedia page on this. So that’s kind of for me, and I don’t think that’s bad.

The problem with Goodreads is that and we’re part of this too, where if it’s not over a four, I’m like, oh, that book probably sucks. But I feel in the Well, the problem with the sequels is they’re always gonna be higher because it’s the fan base that’s reading the sequels. If you didn’t like the first book, you’re not reading the second book. Yeah. So, like, this being a four, five, six, or whatever, it just seems absurd to me.

But I think in my own world, I think I’d give it a three and that’d be fair. So that’s what I’m gonna go with. Yeah. Yeah. That’s fine.

Alright. Well, that was Carl’s doomsday scenario. We’re gonna take a break. I’m sure we’re gonna go back, but we’re gonna take a break from Carl because we need to miss the characters a little bit. I think this will be fun maybe over the summer as, like, a beach read type situation.

Mhmm. So while we take a break from from Carl and Donut, what do we got caught up next? We have Sunrise of the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, a prequel to the Hunger Games book. So this one had good ratings on Goodreads which we, at least me will potentially be disputing pretty heavily and probably gonna have one of those episodes where it’s a lot of ranting going on. But, yeah, that’s a preview for the next one.

It’s this is good because I’m almost done with it. I think I have, like, a forty five minutes left or something like that. Mhmm. And you did the thing that we each do to one another sometimes when we’re reading a book and especially when we suggest it. You gave the my bad text.

Hand up. My bad. And because you had recommended it. And as I was reading it, I was like, it’s fine. Like, it’s not terrible.

So which I feel like is always the case. Anytime I say hand up, you’re like, oh, it’s not that bad, and then vice versa. So maybe it’s just like you’re holding yourself we, you know, we hold ourselves to a higher standard. But, yeah, I’m excited to talk. Alright.

Well, Keith, thanks for chatting, Carl’s doomsday scenario, and I’ll catch you for sunrise and the reaping, something like that. Yep. Sunrise on the reaping. Sunrise on the reaping. Got it.

Okay. Cool. We’ll catch you next time. Alright. Bye now.