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Last Call for Blackford Oakes (Blackford Oakes Novel)Over twenty years ago William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent brainy, bold, and complex began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John LeCarre. Against the backdrop of sinister Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes
Over twenty years ago William F. Buckley Jr. launched the dashing character of Blackford Oakes like a missile over the literary landscape. This newly minted CIA agent--brainy, bold, and complex--began his career by saving the queen of England and quickly took his place in the pantheon of master spies drawn up by Somerset Maugham, Graham Greene, and John LeCarre.
Against the backdrop of sinister Cold War intrigue, in this his eleventh outing, Oakes crosses paths--and swords--with Kim Philby, perhaps the highest-ranking in the parade of defectors to the Soviet Union. Oakes is now himself a master spy, working out of the agency and around agency rules. His romance with an able and worldly Soviet doctor provides consolation for the death of his beloved Sally. But after his return to Washington he receives dismaying news. It is inevitable that the great Soviet spy and the renowned American agent will meet again--this time, with deadly consequences.
Previous novels in the series include Saving the Queen; Stained Glass; Who's on First; Marco Polo, If You Can; The Story of Henri Tod; See You Later, Alligator; High Jinx; Mongoose, R.I.P.; Tucker's Last Stand; A Very Private Plot; and The Blackford Oakes Reader.
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4.1 ★★★★★
Based on 11 reviews
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Product Reviews
★★★★★ 4
A man. A cat. A dungeon. Not much else.
Format: Hardcover
Dungeon Crawler Carl is certainly a book about a guy named Carl, who is in a dungeon. For the first half of the book, that tells you everything you need to know about it, and likely everything you'll remember. Don't worry, the second half won't burden you with too much more.
OK, that's not entirely fair. There's a cat too.
SIGH. OK, fine. I'm not going to belabor the plot; if you want to know that, read the synopsis at the top of the page. So let's talk about the writing. Matt Dinniman's writing style consists almost entirely of somebody nudging you in the ribs while pointing at something they found funny and going "Ehh? EHHHH?" He comes up with some clever jokes, but the way he's chosen to put them to page basically puts a big neon sign up every time that says "GET READY FOR A JOKE," which takes away most of the humor. It's like he thought the Monty Python "Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge, Say No More" sketch could carry an entire book.
But that's better than his attempts at drama. The author has basically set up a situation with zero stakes, because you know Carl and the cat will be fine. He's set up some obvious conflict seeds that I anticipate will matter in books 2 and 4, respectively. Everything else is just an obvious attempt to gin up pathos. But Matt can't even do that without a neon sign saying "You're supposed to care about these people before something bad happens to them." And then...something bad happens. Shocking, right? He apparently realized at one point that he had completely failed to make us care about a side character, because he suddenly exposition-dumped as much back story as he could come up with right as they got into a perilous situation. No loot boxes for guessing what happens next. When The Witcher books used that trick, Andrej Sapkowski managed to make it shocking the first time, and then each time after it got progressively more gut-wrenching, because you had already come to care about the characters. But Dinniman's side characters are just a name, a weapon, and some background actions that barely matter as they occur behind self-insert character Carl. And Carl barely has more characterization than that. I think there were maybe 4 times in the book where he got around 2 paragraphs of back story that went any further than "My girlfriend was cheating on me! She's the worst! *Sniff* and now she's goooooonnne!" And even those instances were pretty much generic protagonist backstory A.
OK, so he hit a single on humor, struck out on drama...what's left? I guess there are some attempts at suspense. But once again, Dinniman's neon sign problem comes into play. To be clear, I'm a very credulous person. I take things at face value and don't look for deeper meaning. My brother figured out the twist to The Sixth Sense after about 20 minutes, and I was gobsmacked at the end. I just want you to understand what kind of person you're dealing with when I say that this book failed to surprise me once. The writing follows a very clear "set up the thing, try to distract you from the fact that the thing was set up, pay off the thing" pattern. More than once, the thing that was being set up was immediately followed by someone essentially saying "Oh, that probably doesn't matter." *Narrator Voice* "It mattered." As soon as any short time jump occurs, you know something consequential happened in it, and Dinniman wants to keep it quiet to "surprise" you in a few pages. And it's usually that fast; no tension building up, just "...and here's how we did it!" My wife used to complain about songs with obvious lyrics, where one line would leave the singer with nowhere to go except the words that came next. Everything was so obvious you could almost sing along the first time you heard it. This writing is exactly that, expanded to more than 400 pages. Oh, and be ready for the book to end on a cliffhanger that feels no more consequential than a typical chapter break and leaves you flipping back and forth thinking your copy must be missing a few pages.
OK. I got all that out of my system. So now the questions remain: Why did I still give it 4 stars, and why did I just order the second book?
Let's start with the obvious one: The humor isn't bad. It would be funnier if it weren't broadcast so obviously, but I laughed out loud more than once. I laughed twice. Which is more than once. And I snickered a few times. And smirked several times. And smiled quite a bit. I even read one joke out loud to my wife, and she chuckled. So there's that.
Also, for an obvious self-insert protagonist, Carl is moderately lovable. Dinniman avoids the obvious hangdog "woe is me" traps that a character like this could fall into, where everything goes wrong and the character whinges endlessly about it. He also doesn't try too hard to be a tough guy or start morphing into an anti-hero. The closest Carl ever gets to that is the occasional thought of "It would be so easy to [do the bad thing] to gain experience..." Then he shakes his head, says he's not that kind of person, and moves on. Because he's not that kind of person. He's somewhat tough, somewhat capable, and knows the rules of the kind of video game the dungeon is based on. I don't hate him.
There are a few clever plot devices. For instance, Dinniman figures out a way that characters can "say" things to each other that wouldn't make sense to say in context, or that would take too long to say in their current circumstances. Then, he creates an in-universe reason to keep the characters from abusing this ability to communicate the way some people do with psi-links in a tabletop RPG. There are enough things like that to make me want to see what he comes up with next.
Finally, I think I'm sticking around because there's a lot of potential here. It's barely visible, just underneath the surface, but it's there. I kept thinking about the first Dresden Files book, which was a LOT rougher than this, but spawned one of the best-written new characters in the past 20 years. I feel like Dungeon Crawler Carl has that same ability to be great, and since there are a bunch more books (and soon a comic!) about this universe, apparently something is going well. So I'll try another book. And maybe another. Maybe I'll get lucky and be wrong about my prediction in the 4th paragraph. I hope Dinniman learned how to surprise me. And if not, I'm sure I'll still have things to smile about in the next book.
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Reviewed in the United States on October 8, 2025
★★★★★ 5
A Hilarious, Action-Packed Thrill Ride!
Format: Hardcover, Format: Hardcover
A Coast Guard veteran and all around good guy, Carl, lives in an apartment with his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut. On a cold, winter night, Donut slips out of a window and gets stuck up a tree. And it’s a good thing she does! Wearing nothing but a jacket, boxers, and a pair of slippers that don’t fit, Carl goes outside to try to coax her down. He’s just about retrieved the cat, and then it happens.
The whole world is changed. In the blink of an eye, every building, car, and piece of technology on the planet is flattened. Smooshed. Gone. A bodiless voice announces that anyone who doesn’t want to live off whatever is left on the planet will need to enter stairs. Carl and the cat do so, and that’s when the fun starts.
It seems the galaxy has had a long-running and massively popular television program that follows “dungeon crawls”—classic role-playing/video game scenarios where adventurers go into a medieval dungeon, explore, fight monsters, win treasure, gain experience, become more powerful, and then proceed to deeper, harder levels. Earth has been selected to serve as the setting for the current season. That’s right. The Earth has been destroyed for the sake of a galactic television game. By entering the stairwell, Carl, Donut, and a couple million other humans have become participants in this game. Instead of remaining a pet, Donut is made into a fellow “crawler,” like Carl. She can speak, and reason, and fight—all with the personality one would expect from a cat named Princess Donut
The rules to this galactically televised dungeon crawl are intricate. But essentially, Carl and Donut begin to mentally see stat screens, just like in an RPG video game: health, various skills, their strength, dexterity, intelligence, and constitution. In classic 80’s kids Dungeons & Dragons style, they have unlimited encumbrance, meaning they can carry anything they can pick up, file it away in “inventory,” and pull it up whenever needed. They‘re on level 1 of this season’s crawl, a classic dungeon with tunnels, doors, chambers, and monsters—lots of different monsters. There’s a countdown running, so they only have so many days to find a set of stairs that will lead them down to the next, harder level. And if they don’t find the stairs before the timer runs out, the level they’re on will collapse. There’s all sorts of lethal dangers awaiting the crawlers. And that’s what takes up the bulk of the book.
There are daring encounters, puzzles to sort through, and lots and lots of monsters to fight. In each encounter, the reader is given real time stats of the characters. After their initial shock, Carl and Donut slowly form an endearing partnership, one that proves quite successful in this dangerous game they‘re forced to play.
I’ll confess for the first quarter of the book, I was skeptical. It felt an awful lot like one of my kids watching someone else playing a video game (which is something I don’t really understand). But Matt Dinniman does a masterful job of weaving in enough subplots—both inside and outside the dungeon—so that both a cohesive story and genuine character development emerge from all the excitement of fighting kobolds, or rigging goblin explosives, or figuring out how to slay a “big boss” monster that vaguely resembles a cat-hoarding old lady. There’s depth to this dungeon.
And of course there’s action. It’s compelling, page-turning, fun. And funny. Dinniman has a sharp, occasionally crass, often dark sense of humor and he knows how to use it in all the right places. There’s snark, and absurdity, and physical comedy, and some snort-through-your nostrils lines. Think of a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons campaign melded with a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy vibe that‘s centered around a likable hero and a hilariously self-absorbed cat.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will definitely be pursuing the series. Highly recommended.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 27, 2025
★★★★★ 5
Wish I’d jumped in sooner
Format: Kindle
Great book, easiest read I’ve had in years. Particularly enjoyed switching between the audio and reading. One of the best audiobooks out there for sure, not quite a radio play but the characters do all get proper voice acting and they are brilliant. Book one had me hooked but book 2 really sealed the deal, grateful that there are so many more to read. The comedy, the horror, the bonkers world building, and some really great character work make one of the most insane setups for a book feel easy to buy into and believe in. I’ve been looking for a series that captures my imagination like this for a while and I think I’ve found it.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2026
★★★★★ 5
Funny, smart and nerdy
Format: Kindle
Are you now or have you ever been a member of a TTRPG group or serious video gamer? This book is for you. You'll get all the in-jokes, understand the process and enjoy the story. It's almost literally a step-by-step description of a dungeon crawl from hell, but I was never bored. Matt Dinniman's tone and how he writes Carl are smart and enjoyable.
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Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2026
★★★★★ 4
Chaotic & absurdly funny!
Format: Paperback, Format: Paperback
Dungeon Crawler Carl was one of those books where the first thought in my head was, what on earth am I reading? And somehow that’s exactly why it works. It’s chaotic, absurdly funny, and completely outside the usual genres I gravitate toward, but it turned out to be such a fun ride.
The premise alone is wild. Earth collapses into a giant dungeon run as a galactic game show, and Carl ends up fighting through it alongside his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, who honestly steals the show for me. Like if I ever get a cat I will probably named her Princess Donut haha! The whole thing is nonstop action, monsters, traps, loot drops, and ridiculous commentary about survival being tied to entertainment value. It’s very LitRPG, very Dungeons & Dragons energy, and packed with pop culture references.
Did a hybrid read and listened to the audiobook when on the go, which is phenomenal and probably the best way to consume it. The narration makes the humor and chaos land even harder. Carl and Princess Donut as a duo are hilarious, and I can already tell this is the kind of series I’ll return to whenever I need a break from heavier reads.
It’s intense, bizarre, and honestly kind of addictive, not something I would jump back to back considering there are like 9 other books, but it is a surprisingly great palate cleanser.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 18, 2026