Chez Aloysius

Carl's Doomsday Scenario is the second book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman. I managed four whole days between finishing the first one and starting this one - but I think the highest peaks of my obsession with this series are (probably thankfully) over - at least for now...
This one has a bit of a slow start, with the whole of the first hour dedicated just to Carl and Doughnut choosing their race and class for the next dungeon level.
I wasn't wholly happy with some of the choices made about certain characters, I struggled a bit more with some of the stereotypes, especially regarding female characters, it definitely didn't make me laugh as much, and some of the humour and some of the violence tipped very close to my ick threshold.
So - diminishing returns already? Overly high expectations from the first book (which I likely enjoyed more because my expectations going into that one were low) not quite being met?
I also could have done without the evil clowns and the parasitic worms...
It was still largely fun, though - and still very clever, not just in the moment but also in terms of how many really complicated and fascinating things are set up for later books... Plus, we get more character and relationship developments, which are all good.
It definitely got me hooked again by the end, so I'm still keen to carry on, but I'm going to start taking longer breaks between volumes.

I picked up The Murderer's Ape by Jakob Wegelius from the local station free book exchange - it's a middle grade historical adventure about a gorilla named Sally Jones, who has to try and help her best friend after he's falsely accused of murder.
Unfortunately, it didn't really work for me - Sally Jones narrates the story in first person, but feels rather removed from events because she can't talk, so the other characters don't really interact with her much. There's also a surprising lack of emotional depth to the narration, considering the themes and the first-person perspective. It is middle grade, I suppose, but I've read plenty of middle grade fiction that is really emotive - and this also has come quite adult content (drunkenness, mentions of a brothel!).
I gave it a good go - I got nearly halfway through - but ended up DNF-ing because I just found myself not wanting to pick it back up.

I've been resisting trying Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman for quite some time - even though, or perhaps because, everyone I follow on BookTube has been going on and on for months about how good it was. It really didn't appeal to me, particularly as I don't generally react well to comedy - but I was even more worried that I'd love it and then be stuck having to catch up on seven more books before then having to wait for the next ones to come out...

And I'm just gonna say it - everyone was right. Goddammit, Doughnut!

I wasn't initially keen on the narrator's 'normal' voice - though performance and production values on the audiobook are very high. All the character voices are awesome, the special effects are just enough to give extra layers of enjoyment without being over the top, and I got used to the narrator well before the end.

It had me snort-laughing out loud in the street, which is rare and always welcome. It also had me frowning at certain aspects of the humour and going, 'EWWWW!' quite a bit, but the pure enjoyment of the overall adventure far outweighed the aspects I wasn't so keen on.

And it does have levels - and not just the dungeon levels! It doesn't delve massively into the trauma of most of the human population being killed in the initial creation of the dungeon, but it does touch on it. And Carl does reflect on how distasteful it is to be forced to kill the monsters, as well as lamenting how many of the other crawlers keep dying as things go on. There's also the start of a really beautiful friendship between Carl and Princess Doughnut (the cat), which I can see deepening a lot as the series continues.

There's a lot of clever seeding of what's to come to make you want to read on, both in this book and drawing you into later instalments - plus lots of inventive variety which presumably keeps making it fresh and interesting, even though it's essentially just Carl working his way down the levels.

The grimace-inducing bro humour is in there - but it's almost entirely restricted to the achievement announcements, which are simulating video game text, so it's pretty authentic for this kind of game... It treads a clever line so it will retain people who might be offended by implying it's satirising these types of games, but also provide the humour itself for those who will enjoy it.

By the second half, I was wanting to keep listening to the exclusion of everything else and can see myself powering through the whole series without a break. This is not how I envisaged the next few months of my life going. Goddammit, Doughnut!

I decided to read The Matchmaker's Gift by Lynda Cohen Loigman because of a reading challenge where I needed a book with 'make' or 'maker' in the title and I thought this one sounded as thought it might be fun.
And it really was.
It follows Sara in the first half of the 1900s, discovering she has a gift for spotting love matches and wanting to pursue a career as a matchmaker in a part of society that does not trust young unmarried women in that role.
It also follows her granddaughter, Abby, who is working as a divorce lawyer in the mid-1990s and discovers more about her family's past and her own abilities when she is given her grandmother's journals.
It was an easy listen, well read by the narrator and a fun story - while the first half felt rather slight and it looked like it would be very predictable, things definitely ramped up in the second half, there were some surprises, and I ended up absolutely loving it.
In the last half an hour or so, it had me laughing and crying at the same time - on the train.
Lovely book.

I completed my recent reread of the first two Villains books with Vengeful by VE Schwab, which is much chunkier than the first book, but follows largely the same approach. The chapters count down to a particular time and place, which is set out from the start, so things gradually get more and more tense towards the end. Various factions of powered and non-powered people hunt each other, with some new and interesting characters introduced for this instalment. As with the first one, it's very well-written, but didn't really hit my emotions all that much. But I'm glad I reread both in anticipation for the third coming out later in the year - and I'll definitely be interested to see where the series goes next.

This weekend, I reread Vicious by VE Schwab and really enjoyed it. I read it in just over a day, and it was great to sink into a very well-written book for hours at a time, after multiple DNFs in a row.
Looking back on my review from 2019, I mostly thought the same things this time around - complex, layered characters; interesting worldbuilding if occasionally not fully making sense; compelling writing, though perhaps not as emotive as I would have preferred.
But well worth the reread, especially since a new one in the series is coming out later in the year.

We played two new games with some friends on Friday night!

Flip 7 is a push-your-luck card game, where each player gets dealt a new card each round, until they either decide to stop or get eliminated. The cards are numbered 0-12, with the higher numbers being more frequent. Your score in each round is the sum of the numbers on the cards you have - but you get eliminated if you get a card that matches one you already have. There are special cards that either benefit you or cause problems, to add extra layers and randomness to the proceedings. We played several times and it was a lot of fun, even though I came last or second to last in every game.

Oh My Pigeons, on the other hand, is a very annoying game, where you have a piece of cardboard that can seat a certain number of pigeons. You have a hand of cards, which give you actions to obtain additional pigeons or steal them from other players - or swap boards with people. There's also a mechanic by which you can flick a die towards another player's board to knock their pigeons off. It's almost impossible to keep you pigeons for more than a couple of rounds, which makes it very difficult to win - which is achieved by filling your board with pigeons. There were some amusing moments, but it was largely just irritating.

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell was randomly on my e-reader for some reason so I thought I'd give it a try, but it wasn't for me! Very spare writing, very action-focused ('this happened, then this happened, then this happened' - as well as battles and torture and women as spoils of war), very little emotional connection to the first-person protagonist. Not my thing so I didn't get very far with it.

First Time Caller by BK Borison has been on my radar for a while - I'm not generally a massive fan of contemporary romance books, but this was recommended by a fair few BookTubers I like, saying it might appeal to people who don't read a lot of romance - and it did!
I liked the radio show setup, the unconventional family dynamics, and both protagonists were engaging. It had two great audiobook narrators, which definitely helped, and also largely avoided the worst of the romance tropes that usually really annoy me.
So, overall, a fun and satisfying read.

Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews is the fifth book in her Innkeeper Chronicles series - which I've come back to more than two years after listening to book four.
It follows the story of Dina, who runs a magical inn that caters to various alien races from across the far reaches of space.
The series is an interesting mix between urban fantasy and space opera sci-fi - and I've thoroughly enjoyed it all the way through.
In this book, the inn hosts an inter-galactic spousal selection competition, which requires Dina to accommodate people from 12 different alien cultures, all of whom have different needs and desires, and some of whom are dangerous or in feuds with some of the others.
It's a whirlwind of a plot, with far too many characters, factions, layers and shenanigans to keep track of, but I just let the audiobook happen and loved every minute of it.
The only downside is that it turns out this isn't the last in the series, and there are major arc-plot threads still to be resolved! I guess I'm glad I have more of this world and characters to look forward to - but it's been four years since this one was published and the author is apparently focusing on a different series for now, so there's no indication as to when the final instalment of the Innkeeper Chronicles might arrive...