BOOK REVIEW: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 6) by Matt Dinniman

 5/5 stars. This story places the crawlers on the 8th floor of the dungeon where the maddening A.I. has designed the floor to force the crawlers to face off against each other to cull the numbers down for the Faction Wars on Level 9. Our main characters have to find ways to avoid fights among themselves and still get all of them to the next floor. At the beginning of the floor, the crawlers got a choice of where they end up. Donut chooses Cuba for the Royal Court of Princess Donut while no one else travels with them. Of course, there is also interaction among Carl / Donut and the other Faction Wars participants as the Valtay and the A.I. try to establish the governing rules that will be used for Faction Wars. 

We also get more backstory about Carl, Mordecai, and even Odette. It is hard to believe that the sixth book into this story could continue to be as entertaining as book 1, from such a simple premise, but the story just gets more intriguing and more emotionally vested for every one of the crawlers. 

I also found the section about Carl's father poignant and emotional in many ways, especially as we see what his father was actually doing on the last Christmas before the invasion. Carl witnesses what his father's life had become and rather than emotionally breaking him, as the show creators have expected, he becomes more determined than ever to find a path to victory against the aliens and the A.I. We also learn in an afterword by Matt Dinniman that his own father passed away during the time that he was writing the section about Carl's father, which adds even more significance to this section of the story.

I enjoyed this story more than either of the previous two, although they have all been a pleasure to read and very entertaining. Once again, I highly recommend this series to anyone who enjoys science fiction/fantasy, action/adventure, game-playing, and humor.