August 2026 Book Report

This may be a short Book Report. Creative Life has taken a backseat to Work Life, which, though it involves a lot of writing, also involves budgets and reports and sooo many zoom calls. I’ve become extremely proficient at changing the background photo on my zoom window (mountain photos primarily, though also trail shots and a very popular curling background), but that’s about as creative as I can get.

So, while I am lucky to work in a field I enjoy, work can also interfere with my creative ventures and the time allotted to them. And yet, I persist.

Given the abundance of Work Life, my Kennel Clubs may become a bit shorter in the next while. It’s tough for me to be concise, however, perhaps due to my “I’m just winging-it” writing style. I don’t have a line up of Kennel Clubs waiting to publish but write each one each week, meandering until it reaches, hopefully, a point. And that meandering takes time. Which I don’t have.

What’s your opinion on length? Do you think short is better? Does it depend? I’ve tried a survey here in the past, so I’m trying another. If you’re reading this in the SubStack app, let me know what you think using this quick poll. If you’re receiving this via email, you’ll most likely have to open up the app to respond.

This novel is finding its way. Though the setting is fictional, it is based loosely on the Earl Grey Pass in the Kootenays, a rugged 65 km wilderness trail that two friends and I trekked in 2016. Aside from the trail crew we saw in the first hour, we saw no one else for four days until a couple of riders appeared on horses an hour from the exit on the west side. It’s true wilderness, and though we saw no bears or any large mammals, signs of them were everywhere.

We plodded through avalanche chutes grown thick with alder and littered with boulders. We crossed raging creeks on cable cars and slippery logs. Many times the trail had been blocked with massive, downed trees of 4-5 feet diameter, and the only way to cross was to climb up and over. The trail crew had cut steps into most of the trees, so aside from needing a boost up or a hand up here and there, we were able to climb onto them fairly efficiently.

The Pass centers around two characters who find themselves on a similar trail – a woman with no gear, no map, no food, and no equipment, and a dog sent to find her. That’s all I’ll say about it for now. It’s been fun looking at photos and revisiting the trail, and I’m sharing a few photos of the stunning terrain (and the intrepid Molly, our sole canine member of the crew).

When I read The Odyssey last spring, I had no idea that a new Hollywood version was due to release. It makes sense, given the lack of new material and original scripts in the industry now (Avengers XXV, anyone?). I say this, not as anyone with any knowledge of Hollywood, but as someone who, like the orange-man-baby currently at the helm of the world’s largest failing superpower, doesn’t care about reality.

I’ve heard talk about the trauma-informed leanings of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and while I leave the merits of the argument to others (see here for a very thorough discussion of The Odyssey and PTSD), I must refer readers back to the book review I wrote in the June Book Report. After all, what is a sign of trauma if not excessive crying? Odysseus, a warrior king, cries rivers of tears, a trait shared by his bawling son Telemachus.

So I guess I called it. If Hollywood needs me to work on the next Blockbuster remake, I’m available.

I’ve read several books since the last Book Report, but none of them has hooked me like Dungeon Crawler Carl, the best book series I’ve discovered since Sookie Stackhouse started dating a vampire.

If you don’t know about Sookie, here’s a primer:

But never mind Sookie. I’m crushing on Carl.

Originally self-published in 2020, Dungeon Crawler Carl (and its seven sequels) was picked up by Ace Books, the science fiction imprint of Penguin Random House, in 2024. It begins with Carl who runs outside in the middle of the night to capture Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s Persian show cat who has escaped out a window and lodged herself in a tree outside his apartment complex.

Clad only in boxers and wearing no shoes, Carl is cajoling Princess Donut to come down when every building in the neighborhood suddenly collapses into dust. A disembodied voice, like a megaphone from the sky, informs him that the world itself will soon collapse. All survivors must enter the World Dungeon, an eighteen-level dungeon crawl reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons (I assume… I’ve never played D&D) where “crawlers” like Carl and Donut are forced to battle goblins and other aliens while trying to reach the next level before the current one collapses.

Millions of the world’s human survivors enter the Dungeon World in an attempt to survive. Their efforts are live-streamed in Dungeon Crawler World: Earth a game show broadcast to an audience throughout the universe. Crawlers must build their skills and inventories to reach higher and higher levels in order to stay alive as they descend into the deeper level dungeons.

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The pace of the books never slows. Carl and Donut initially survive through luck and the fact that the goons in the first dungeon are very low-level aliens. With each battle they survive, they win loot boxes with tools and enhancements to help them keep on crawling. There are boss battles, side quests, and televised interviews of the series’ most popular crawlers (no surprise – Carl and Donut are fan favorites).

The plot is simple. Survive to crawl another day. The ultimate goal is to reach a level which will allow the crawler to live in the dungeon world rather than compete in it. No crawler, human or otherwise, has made it beyond Level 13, though others have reached the point where they can assume another race and become part of the dungeon’s workforce, like Mordecai, who provides counsel to new crawlers, or Odette, who stars in a TV talk show and interviews Carl and Donut.

The characters, including other crawlers and aliens who are employed by the syndicate that mines planets like Earth and runs the Dungeon World games, are both funny and dark. I alternate between laughter and heart-pounding fear of what comes next. Donut, or Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, as she is formally known, is hilarious and a perfect counter to Carl’s serious man-energy.

I am only on Book 2 (there are eight books, with a final one, broken into two separate books, still to come), but I am in it for the duration. If you like fantasy, don’t mind gore, and are looking for laugh-out-loud fun, check out Dungeon Crawler Carl here. I don’t know about you, but in this day and age, I’m always looking for something to make me laugh.

For now, Kennel Clubbers, adieu.