An enjoyable entry to the series, as it's always good coming back to visit such fun and interesting characters. This book felt like a lot of prep, a lot of set-up for futures novels. Some of that worked for me, some of it didn't. 

In the 'real world', shit is hitting the fan harder than ever. I think that's apparent, and could become very interesting later on, but a lot of the time in this book I felt it got in the way of what was already a very complex story, with dozens of different characters, plot points and other things to juggle. 

There's a lot to like here. The

other Crawlers returning to the dungeon

was very special. I enjoyed hearing the previous Cookbook owners backstories, and

what happened to the ones that survived

. 

I think this book suffered from too much stuff, simply put. I wish we'd got a bit less of plot thread 13, and a bit more Carl/Donus shenanigans. However, with the way things ended and Faction Wars now behind us, I'm still interested to see what happens next.