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A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman
May. 16th, 2026 01:00 pmA Parade of Horribles
4/5. Dungeon Crawler book, do not start here, it will be incomprehensible. I had a good time in the midst of an awful week, here are some random thoughts:
• It’s fun to read a book where you suspect the author wrote a specific scene for the audiobook. They got the rights to “Take on Me,” and that’s all I’ll say about that. For those who don’t know, these audiobooks are extremely good, but Audible exclusive, bleh.
• Big lore dump. Did that clear anything up, really? I mean, no, but points for trying.
• I’m not positive he meant to do this, but at least one character gestures at the sex worker / NPC comparison I have been thinking about since early on. I.e. people considered disposable nonpersons by narratives.
• This book ran on rails for the first part in a way we haven’t seen for a while. I wasn’t sure I liked that, but he found ways to make it narratively interesting, and ultimately there’s a good in-universe explanation for it.
• Interesting game-breaking here. I was speculating that he would need to do something like that in this specific book before I even opened it and yeah, right on the money.
• The cat is still the MVP, obviously.
Content notes: Gore, general grossness, the AI being a rebirthing pervert and a million other kinds of perverts.
4/5. Dungeon Crawler book, do not start here, it will be incomprehensible. I had a good time in the midst of an awful week, here are some random thoughts:
• It’s fun to read a book where you suspect the author wrote a specific scene for the audiobook. They got the rights to “Take on Me,” and that’s all I’ll say about that. For those who don’t know, these audiobooks are extremely good, but Audible exclusive, bleh.
• Big lore dump. Did that clear anything up, really? I mean, no, but points for trying.
• I’m not positive he meant to do this, but at least one character gestures at the sex worker / NPC comparison I have been thinking about since early on. I.e. people considered disposable nonpersons by narratives.
• This book ran on rails for the first part in a way we haven’t seen for a while. I wasn’t sure I liked that, but he found ways to make it narratively interesting, and ultimately there’s a good in-universe explanation for it.
• Interesting game-breaking here. I was speculating that he would need to do something like that in this specific book before I even opened it and yeah, right on the money.
• The cat is still the MVP, obviously.
Content notes: Gore, general grossness, the AI being a rebirthing pervert and a million other kinds of perverts.