Audiobook Review – Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4) by Matt Dinniman, Narrated by Various (5/5 stars)

Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy/Humor
Length: 18 hours and 3 minutes
Publisher:‎ Soundbooth Theater
Release Date: September 16, 2021
ASIN: ‎B09GD882BQ
Stand Alone or Series: 4th book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series
Source: Bought Audiobook from Audible.com
Rating: 5/5 stars

“A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.

It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Here’s the thing. It’s never easy. Carl and his team can’t go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can’t-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.”

Series Info/Source: This is the fourth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I bought this on audiobook.

Thoughts: This was a fantastic continuation of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. There was a lot of action, adventure, strategy, and some new wonderful characters introduced.

Carl and Donut are on Level 5 and it is a crazy one. The groups have been split up in to bubbles, and each bubble has four castles that must be won. The teams are trapped in the quadrant for their castle until they can conquer it, and then they can help other quadrants. Once all four castles are conquered, their bubble will “pop” and they can help other quadrants. Between the weird camel-humans who have serious attitudes, the bomb-dropping gnomes, and all the low level characters they are stuck with, this level is going to be a serious challenge.

I enjoyed this book a lot more than the previous one where they were in the Iron Tangle. This has a lot more adventure and action and ties in even more to the broader alien world. We get to meet a lot of fun new characters. Even better, Carl gets to continue on his quest to screw up the dungeon as a whole.

If you’ve enjoyed the first three books in the series, you will enjoy this one. I continue to love the characters, amazing world-building, action, and humor in these books. I really don’t have a lot more to say aside from the fact that this series is awesome and you should read it. Make sure to read the Epilogue all the way through because there are some crazy plot twists introduced there.

We listened to this on audiobook and the audiobooks are well done. They use multiple voice actors and sound effects. I will say that as a family, we have had some issue with the sound balancing on these audiobooks. We normally listen to these in the car while driving and have had issues not being able to hear the AI voice or in this case the voices of the characters when they were underwater. We ended up having to turn the audiobook way up in volume to hear those parts. While I applaud the effort to make the book sound more immersive, the sound really needs to be balanced out to the same volume. This has been an issue with all of the audiobooks in this series.

My Summary (5/5): Overall this is a wonderful continuation of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. This book is back to all the action, adventure, world-building, and fun characters that we saw in the first two books. My whole family really loves these books (keep in mind my son is 17 years old and these are more mature reads). In fact my teenager paid me to buy books 5 and 6 so he can start listening to those books immediately. If you are a fan of action adventure fantasy with amazing world-building and you like dungeon crawls you will love this series. Even if you aren’t a fan of any of that you will probably love this series and should check it out.