The Yorkshire Book Collector - The Vault

Well, I’m tearing through these (audio) books faster than Carl and Donut could tear through a circus full of evil lemurs. This was an interesting direction to take the story on the back of the first book. Rather than continuing the grim, Dungeon Crawling style to the adventure Carl and Donut find themselves in an open world RPG style setting with a much more quest based approach to progression. I still really enjoyed it, I just didn’t enjoy the setting as much as the first book, hence the four stars. I think it was a necessary change to take the story into themed levels, and doing it before the novelty of traditional Dungeon Crawling wore off will probably prove to be the best approach as I read more of this. The story still focuses primarily on the buddy species duo of Carl and Donut with some really interesting character development as we go. It’s nice to see the human aspect to both characters as Carl starts to become Jaded with the game and the system, and as Donut shows she’s far ...

This book was the literal definition of a hype read for me. I didn’t know what I was going into, only that it had a silly name, a silly cover and people are going crazy for this series. I get it. F*ck me do I get it. For a bit of context as to how my experience was Dungeon Crawler Carl has gone, last week I was listening to Words of Radiance so I could keep pace with my Stormlight Archive reading while I travelled for work. I ran out of free hours on that and decided to finally start Dungeon Crawler Carl with the intention of reading it alongside my physical read, mainly for something to have in the car. I haven’t turned a page of Words of Radiance between starting and finishing this book. I was hooked, I was enthralled, I was thoroughly entertained. Yes, it’s silly, yes it’s unconventional but it isn’t one dimensional and it doesn’t rely on the novelty of it’s setting to carry the story, I care about Carl and Princess Donuts progression and stats, I care about the items they loot, I c...

When Grim Oak Press announced they’d be producing a limited edition of Malice I went through a roller coaster of emotions. Joy at the fact I would finally be able to replace my long lost Goldsboro copy that was sacrificed to become brake discs, sorrow at the financial ruin that was about to sweep across my bank account, fear that my partner would find out how much I paid for “another f*cking book”, before finally arriving back at Joy. I will state my biases early for anyone who doesn’t know me. Malice is my favourite book, ever. If I didn’t pick this book up in an airport back in 2012, I wouldn’t read books now. If I hadn’t fallen in love with the story and bought a copy of the limited Hardcover from Goldsboro, I wouldn’t collect books now. In fact as I write this, John Gwynne has a lot to answer for…anyway. My point is, sentimentally I have a lot more into this book than most but Grim Oak Press are known for their quality so luckily I feel like I can give this a fair review (if not, w...