The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Welcome to the Iron Tangle! Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, have to team up with other contestants not just to survive, but to solve a deadly puzzle in this third, mind-twisting novel in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—now with bonus material exclusive to this print edition.

Earth has been transformed into the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show: Dungeon Crawler World, a nightmarish, multilevel, video game–like dungeon filled with traps, monsters, and mind-bending puzzles. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds, from classic steam engines to sleek modern cars. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations aren’t always what they seem, and the exit is perpetually just a few stops away.

The top ten list is populated, and Carl and Donut have made it. But that popularity comes with a price. They each now have a bounty on their head. They must work with other crawlers to solve the puzzle of the floor, but how can they do that when they don’t know who to trust? The secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book.

Welcome, Crawlers. Welcome to the fourth floor of the dungeon.

Matt Dinniman is a writer and artist from Gig Harbor, Washington. He is the author of the NYTs best-selling Dungeon Crawler Carl series along with several other books about the end of the world. He doesn't really hate Cocker Spaniels, and he plays bass in a metal band.

Matt Dinniman’s The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook, the third installment in the wildly popular LitRPG series Dungeon Crawler Carl, plunges readers back into the absurd, brutal, and darkly comedic reality of the World Dungeon. After surviving the first three levels of a sadistic, galaxy-wide reality television show designed by alien corporations for the entertainment of the universe, the story’s unlikely heroes—a pantsless former Coast Guardsman named Carl and his ex-girlfriend's highly intelligent, talking cat, Princess Donut—arrive on the dreaded fourth floor. This level, known as the Iron Tangle, is a nightmarish, multidimensional subway system constructed from Earth's subterranean railway networks tied into an impossibly complex knot. In this sprawling labyrinth, standard geography ceases to exist; up is down, trains from different universes hurtle through the dark, and every station is a potential death trap. Dinniman uses this claustrophobic, confusing environment to escalate the stakes, pushing the characters beyond mere survival and into the realm of active rebellion against the system that enslaved them.

The narrative immediately establishes a tense, high-stakes atmosphere. Carl and Donut have achieved massive popularity among the intergalactic audience, securing a spot on the top ten crawler leaderboard. However, this fame comes with a deadly price: substantial bounties have been placed on their heads, incentivizing other desperate human crawlers to hunt them down. This introduces a chilling element of player-versus-player conflict, forcing Carl and Donut to navigate a world where engineered mistrust is constantly pushed by the showrunners. The dungeon is actively designed to turn companions into liabilities and isolate the crawlers, making alliances fragile and paranoia rampant. Despite this, Carl remains stubbornly committed to solidarity, often risking his own life and resources to save other trapped humans rather than treating them as competitors. This profound commitment to his humanity, even as the game tries to strip it away, forms the emotional core of the novel.

A central element of the plot is the introduction of the titular artifact, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook. Acquired by Carl through a prize box, this item initially appears to be a useless manual. However, it quickly reveals itself to be a clandestine, magical ledger passed down through generations of previous dungeon crawlers. Invisible to the game's administrators and viewers, the cookbook contains hidden maps, survival secrets, and methods for sabotaging the dungeon's infrastructure. It acts as a beacon of subversion, transforming Carl from a desperate survivor playing by the aliens' rules into a budding revolutionary. The cookbook is not just a tool; it represents shared generational trauma and a legacy of defiance against systemic oppression, fundamentally shifting the trajectory of Carl's journey from passive endurance to active resistance.

Dinniman’s signature blend of ridiculous humor and brutal violence is on full display as the party expands and evolves. The core team, guided by their shape-shifting manager Mordecai and accompanied by Mongo the velociraptor, is bolstered by Katia, a fellow crawler who unlocks a powerful but terrifying shapeshifting class. The LitRPG mechanics—leveling up, inventory management, and skill selection—are seamlessly integrated into the chaotic action. A standout sequence involves Katia using her new mass-altering abilities to act as a living cowcatcher on the front of a speeding train, violently plowing through hordes of monsters to rescue trapped crawlers. Meanwhile, Princess Donut continues to be a source of immense comedic relief and surprising strategic depth, adopting a "Hooligan" class that grants her party-buffing mascot abilities while retaining her imperious feline attitude and obsession with her intergalactic fan base.

Beneath the explosive action and quirky game mechanics, the book grapples with heavy themes of trauma, identity, and the grotesque nature of corporate entertainment. The showrunners constantly attempt to manipulate the crawlers' suffering into consumable spectacles for the alien viewers. The physical and magical transformations the characters undergo force them to question what remains of their original humanity. As Katia struggles with her monstrous new forms and Carl grapples with the emotional toll of the violence he must inflict, the novel asks whether identity is tied to the physical body or to the loyalties and choices one makes under extreme pressure.

Ultimately, The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook elevates the series from a clever, violent romp to a deeply engaging story about resilience and collective action. The climax, which involves brilliantly weaponizing the train system's mechanics to divert an army of monsters into an abyss, is a testament to Carl's evolving strategic genius and his refusal to play the game exactly as intended. By the time the train cars settle and the dust clears, Dinniman has successfully expanded the mythology of the World Dungeon, setting the stage for a much larger galactic conflict. It is a masterful continuation of the series that balances laugh-out-loud absurdity with genuine emotional weight, proving that even in a universe designed to break you, holding onto your empathy might be the most powerful weapon of all.