The Gate of the Feral Gods: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 4

4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars | 15,933 ratings

Price: 26.21

Last update: 04-26-2025


About this item

New achievement! Total, utter failure.

You failed a quest less than five minutes after you received it. Now that’s talent.

A floating fortress occupied by warrior gnomes. A castle made of sand. A derelict submarine guarded by malfunctioning machines. A haunted crypt surrounded by lethal traps.

It was supposed to be easy. One bubble. Four castles. Fifteen days. Capture each one, and the stairwell is unlocked.

Here's the thing. It's never easy. Carl and his team can't go it alone. Not this time. They must rely on the help of the low-level, I-can't-believe-these-idiots-are-still-alive crawlers trapped in the bubble with them. But can they be trusted?

Welcome, Crawler. Welcome to the fifth floor of the dungeon.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Karissa Eckert
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing fun and so creative!
    Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2024
    Series Info/Source: This is the fourth book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I bought this on audiobook.

    Thoughts: This was a fantastic continuation of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. There was a lot of action, adventure, strategy, and some new wonderful characters introduced.

    Carl and Donut are on Level 5 and it is a crazy one. The groups have been split up in to bubbles, and each bubble has four castles that must be won. The teams are trapped in the quadrant for their castle until they can conquer it, and then they can help other quadrants. Once all four castles are conquered, their bubble will "pop" and they can help other quadrants. Between the weird camel-humans who have serious attitudes, the bomb-dropping gnomes, and all the low level characters they are stuck with, this level is going to be a serious challenge.

    I enjoyed this book a lot more than the previous one where they were in the Iron Tangle. This has a lot more adventure and action and ties in even more to the broader alien world. We get to meet a lot of fun new characters. Even better, Carl gets to continue on his quest to screw up the dungeon as a whole.

    If you've enjoyed the first three books in the series, you will enjoy this one. I continue to love the characters, amazing world-building, action, and humor in these books. I really don't have a lot more to say aside from the fact that this series is awesome and you should read it. Make sure to read the Epilogue all the way through because there are some crazy plot twists introduced there.

    We listened to this on audiobook and the audiobooks are well done. They use multiple voice actors and sound effects. I will say that as a family, we have had some issue with the sound balancing on these audiobooks. We normally listen to these in the car while driving and have had issues not being able to hear the AI voice or in this case the voices of the characters when they were underwater. We ended up having to turn the audiobook way up in volume to hear those parts. While I applaud the effort to make the book sound more immersive, the sound really needs to be balanced out to the same volume. This has been an issue with all of the audiobooks in this series.

    My Summary (5/5): Overall this is a wonderful continuation of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. This book is back to all the action, adventure, world-building, and fun characters that we saw in the first two books. My whole family really loves these books (keep in mind my son is 17 years old and these are more mature reads). In fact my teenager paid me to buy books 5 and 6 so he can start listening to those books immediately. If you are a fan of action adventure fantasy with amazing world-building and you like dungeon crawls you will love this series. Even if you aren't a fan of any of that you will probably love this series and should check it out.
  • Tammy Moldovan
    5.0 out of 5 stars More Carl and Donut adventures
    Reviewed in the United States on May 7, 2024
    I loved this intense continuation of the Dungeon Crawl game show with Carl, Princess Donut, Katia, and Mongo as they try to survive and get to the next level with the help of Mordecai. The story had the perfect balance of humor, love, real life issues, cuteness, danger, machinations, supernatural elements, surprises, and morality. This book continues exactly where the last book left off. Carl, Donut, Katia, and Mongo are now on level 5 of the Crawl - the Bubble - where they have to defeat the four castles in their quadrant in order to access the stairwell down. They are still very popular with the fans, Mordecai continues to assist them, Carl continues to come up with crazy dangerous plans, many of the characters from previous floors are back, and Donut continues to be Donut. I love the interplay between Carl and Princess Donut and that Carl’s character is a sweet, snarky, messy, lucky, sarcastic, kind of dumb, angry, and awkward man who regularly screws up which just makes him a very likeable and relatable hero. I especially love his mantra of “you will not break me” with the addition now of “I will break you.” The story includes what you’d expect from this genre - fighting, dangerous situations, supernatural creatures, evil entities, henchmen, loyal friends, tragic back stories, mystical coincidences, snark, plot twists, and laughs. There was once again some light ethical, moral, and philosophical undercurrents which added to the depth of the story but did not detract from it. I will definitely keep reading the series to see what the next levels are like and what happens with Carl and Princess Donut and to see what Carl’s plans are to mess up the game.
  • E. Thiessen
    4.0 out of 5 stars Really fun series!
    Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2024
    It's been a couple of months since I read book #3, so I had to shake out the rust and remember that they had been on the train level when it ended, and this one picks up right where he left off. The train one was exhausting, but it was good, but my favorite is still the second book. I liked this one better than the train level, but not as much as the second book. However, what I liked about this one was that the Anarchist's cookbook starts to play a bigger role, so you get information from past crawlers that start to guide his strategy, although he has to be very careful not to let on that he has an outside source of information.

    Katia really comes into her own in this level and I really liked that about her. There were several times during this book when I would think, "Yes!" about something that she did. There are some humorous moments as usual (yes, a few times when I actually guffawed), not the least of which is someone who will become a new member of their crew. Sort of. I'll just let you read it, lol.

    The ending was very exciting and set us up very nicely for the next book. Overall, I'm digging this series and ready for the next one. My only disappointment is that this series is not yet complete, so after the next two books I'm going to have to wait. Sigh.
  • Lucas Brown
    5.0 out of 5 stars Getting better and better!
    Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2024
    I've never read LitRPG before, and never had any interest in it. For some reason I kept hearing about this series and it inexplicably peaked my interest to the point that I figured id try the 1st one just to see what all the hype was about. I was grabbed from the beginning- this did not read like some self published amateur pulp. The characters have heart. The bad guys have good reasons for their behaviors. And the humor was genuinely authentic and smart. No wasted or tired cliches. Nothing went unearned. I was shocked how much i enjoyed it! And each book has subsequently gotten better and better. What Matt has done with this world in expanding and fleshing out the details is incredible. This one gets Really wild. It goes places you wouldn't expect it to. Matt deserves all the success in the world, and I cant wait to read the next one! The only down side is I'm almost caught up to his latest, and then ill have to wait for the next one to be released!

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