It’s Matt Dinniman’s fault. Dinniman, the next denizen of the Hell he speculates about in Dungeon Crawler Carl with one of the pineapple sticks getting shoved down his throat by Rory, is to blame. How dare he write a series I could not resist?

I had gone into a local bookstore, and the owners had a front table near the counter prominently displaying all eight books of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Some of the blame may lie with the staff, but only a minuscule speck compared to the gargantuan tonnage of blame slamming down on Dinniman’s nether regions. I had heard about this book, and it had, I confess, intrigued me for some time. But, with a reading list running to about 125 titles, I resisted. I was not going to get anything more to extend that idiotically spectacular list.

I found these eight volumes were actually scrubbed up, and not your typical, boring, naff hardcovers. They had bonus material. And lovely graphics on the front cover, under the dust jackets. Bloody, Dinniman. So, I bought the first volume. I happened to be in town on the next day, too, so I just popped into the bookstore again. I walked out with book two. At this time of year, I am often in my local town, so on days three and four, I ended up buying books three and four. I had to get some rat traps, so I ended up in a different part of town. The local bookstore there had books five and eight. I wound up buying book five, swearing I would wait until I read at least the first couple to see if they took.

My plan was to buy the remaining books from Amazon here if it turned out I liked the series enough. That was the plan. Yet, I found Amazon was running out of the editions I had been buying. Some were already out of stock. That torpedoed my plan just brilliantly. I did wonder if Dinniman was holding out on Amazon. I was sitting right here where I am now, trying to write Rising Late but, as you no doubt have already guessed, I caved like a soggy paper bag. I jumped into the car and drove into my local bookstore to specifically get the final three books. The idea of having to look at different editions on my bookshelf plagued me like a leprous rash, as I am a bit OCD about such things. I am sure Dinniman knew this.

I devoured the first book in a few days. I laughed a hell of a lot, and I rarely laugh at books. Carl the Pantless is a legend, and Princess Donut makes a great partner. The banter between the pair and their growing connection switches the manic energy of the story up just nicely.

So, what is this phenomena with which Dinniman exploits the vulnerable with his brilliance? Dungeon Crawler Carl is part of a sub-genre called “LitRPG.” Yeah, I had to look that one up, too. Basically, it is fiction written in line with gaming structures, such as menus popping up, and a few phrases I had no idea were phrases. Like, “debuff.” What the hell? The game aspect of Carl is where Dinniman’s genius comes in.

The Earth gets a visit from a massive galactic government system called the Syndicate, and the Borant Corporation is hosting this season of Dungeon Crawler World. A World Dungeon is created underground in the Earth, after an apocalyptic event wipes out a whole tonne of humanity’s population - like billions. A lot of the survivors choose to enter the dungeon, to which stairs have emerged at different points around the globe.

The Crawlers are contestants in a sadistic game of Dungeons and Dragons / Pathfinder / Your Worst Nightmare where they need to level up through combat and other activities, improving their stats block and gaining loot. All the while, mobs, various levels of mob bosses, and even some other Crawlers are out to kill them. In Dungeon Crawler World, death means death.

Princess Donut, gets elevated to partner level by the guide assigned to Carl and her, meaning she is no longer just the cat Carl picked up when his ex-girlfriend dumped him for another dude. Donut is a talking, fighting, Royal cat.

The pace is frenetic, packed full of insanity, and has a dark, satirical knife twisting deep inside the gullet of reality TV shows. Dinniman is a funny writer. There is a tonne of profanity, but if that is something you’re okay with, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a hoot. Even non-gamers like me will soon catch their rhythm. I was hooked into by page four. It is that good.

If you have been wondering about it, wonder no more. If fantasy embedded in a science fiction book which makes a serious nod to Douglas Adams is your juice, then join Carl and Princess Donut. You won’t regret it.

Goddamnit, Dinniman.

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I intended this article as a review, but the monumental nature of what mind.in.a.box (MIAB) had done overwhelmed me. In a work that has now spanned twenty years and seven albums, MIAB have achieved a work unparalleled in scope and depth, a modern icon in the cyberpunk scene. The only lack is the number of people who have actually heard of it, though in independent music circles, MIAB has a large fanbase.

The story, in very basic terms, follows Agent Black as he works for the Agency hunting rebels who have the ability to enter a place called the Dreamweb. Black goes undercover, and his success also his a problem. The target of his investigation, someone called “Friend,” commits suicide. Actually, Friend translates into the Dreamweb. The seven albums continue a singular story over their entire length, with intricate sub-plots which are not resolved until albums later. In Lost Alone (2004), Black encounters a beautiful female, but she remains a mystery until Memories (2015).

The storyline and the music are thoroughly in the cyberpunk subgenre, with voice clips, heavy synths, distorted vocals, clean vocals, and everything you would expect in epic cyberpunk. The music lends a sonic deepening to the story, the emotive hook to draw you along with Agent Black and the Agency, as well as Black’s development into something more than an Agency man of unquestioning loyalty.

A lot of bands have released concept albums, wherein they develop a single narrative or conceptual arch over an often longer than usual album. Many of these have stretched to well over an hour and around fifteen tracks, in my own experience. MIAB take that concept and inject it with a kilotonne of meth.

The noir elements in the Dreamweb saga bring a degree of uniqueness which sets it apart from the blinding neon of more mainstream cyberpunk. The continuation over seven albums to date has allowed MIAB to explore characters in depth and propel the listener to greater depths of investment than would have been possible on a single album.

One of the great things about such a long project as Dreamweb is the opportunity to witness the evolution of MIAB’s sound from 2004, when they put out Lost Alone, to 2023 when Black and White was released. In early years, the sound was less polished, with a more limited vocal range. Over the years, MIAB began pushing the envelope into more polished productions, as well as exploring wider vocal motifs. And it worked. Those later albums are something different and certainly are more to my own personal tastes.

What has Dreamweb contributed to cyberpunk? The idea that boundaries are meant to be pushed and musicians can tell real stories, in depth, and for a hell of a long time. It is not just writers who have the tools to spin tales over multiple volumes, but MIAB have shown a pair of musicians with the willingness to push their talent can do just that. Not only that, MIAB have shown they can create a depth of connection with the listener which writers have to work hard to achieve, simply because we cannot put wickedly cool music into our books’ pages.

What MIAB have created is not simply a version of an audio book. It is more than that, though they have departed in that direction, moving away from pure album, as well. Dreamweb still keeps to the roots of the music artform, but pushes it towards a richer narrative scope. They are still a long way from audio books, and there is no illusion here of “reading” anything, but a greater depth of involvement by using music to elicit responses which are not entirely intellectual or logical is achieved, in my opinion.

As the project of MIAB continues as a solo project for the moment, the contribution made by these seven albums to cyberpunk and music is still to be realised by the wider community. However, MIAB have carved a niche for their brand of storytelling, and they weave wonderful adventures through the cyberpunk landscape.

If you have not had a change to enjoy the MIAB sound, do get yourself over to their page on Bandcamp and take a look. You won’t regret it.

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Without the divine, you have no basis for law. Laws become merely opinions.

I used to think I was a bit of a clever nut because I had argued the above, with the caveat that perhaps ‘natural law’ was the exception to the claim. It is not really. My point was and is without some sense of the divine beyond the created order and Us (the human race), any morality is based on a set of agreed, and acceptable, opinions. Therefore, to put forward a rather extreme example, one has no real basis for claiming the Holocaust of Nazi Germany was morally wrong beyond it is a matter of opinion based on a set of supposedly agreed rules to which the Third Reich clearly did not subscribe. Everything is up for negotiation unless there is a “transcendent frame” at work (Charles Taylor is the writer from whom I pinched the term).

Then I found out a few people, in particular Philip Rieff and Charles Taylor cited in Carl R. Trueman’s book, had beaten me to it. Such is the hubris I am want to succumb to occasionally.

Carl B. Trueman discusses the work of Rieff and Taylor and draws together a thorough analysis of Western culture as it stands today. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self considers how Rieff’s and Taylor’s work contribute to a wider understanding of how Western culture came to be the apparent chaotic mess of competing moral voices it is today and in such a short time.

Trueman places the current trends in culture in a much wider context reaching back centuries, though he limits himself to a selection of key thinkers in more recent centuries. In fact, Trueman says you can even track some elements of our social imagination back to the writings of Saint Paul and Augustine of Hippo, though he himself pulls short of doing that, which he says would render his work unwieldy and massive, but useless. Setting some clear terminological points down as a foundation, Trueman sets out on a tour de force of some of the major contributors whose ideas have developed in the context of technological, economic, and cultural conditions which have shaped aspects of Western culture as it morphes in very short periods of time. Karl Marx, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sigmund Freud, and more are placed into a wider stream of thought which covers philosophy, psychology, sociology, literature, and more.

Trueman presents his research in a massively well-referenced form, with notes at the end of each chapter. This is a book where readers can really dive into the endnotes and get some very good pointers towards further reading, if Trueman’s book is not deep enough for you. Trueman also makes the point that he attempts to be fair to the opposing sources he is quoting and aims to have those sources recognisable enough they would recognise themselves if they were to read his book. There is a lot to commend in Trueman’s approach to the subject.

I had first heard about The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self when I heard Melissa Dougherty talking about her own book Happy Lies: How a Movement You (Probably) Never Heard of Shaped Our Self-Obsessed World. Talking about her research for her book, Dougherty mentions Trueman’s book as the “meatier” source she would recommend to readers. I have found Trueman’s book very accessible, though a couple of really long sentences required multiple readings to parse the meaning a little more.

I am quite new to reading books on the history of Western culture from a Christian perspective rooted in faith. I have long wondered and been confused by the state of Western culture and how it overturned a lot of its own value system in such a short time. The confused, ill-equipped Christian for which Trueman and others are writing was and is me. If you are in a similar, confused state about the society in which you have found yourself, I recommend Trueman’s book as a great starting point to clearing up what we observe and setting it all in the wider historical context.

Before I read Trueman’s book, I had read the shorter That Hideous Strength: A Deeper Look at How the West Was Lost by Melvin Tinker. As it happens, Carl Trueman wrote the foreword to Tinker’s book. Tinker focuses on the influence of Neo-Marxist thought while similarly placing the current state of Western culture in a longer historical sequence which touches on some of the points in Trueman’s work.

For a briefer dip into the pool of how we got where we are, Tinker’s book is very good and clear. It is short (only about two hundred pages) but it will whet the appetite a little. The Triumph of the Modern Self will take you much deeper into the rabbit hole. Both of these books are a solid starting point for the perplexed Christian and just about anyone else who is asking what the hell.

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Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (RP1), which I read after I saw the movie, was a cyberpunk roller-coaster with a veritable cascade of 1980’s references and trivia. That alone made the book much more interesting than the movie, as I walked away with a lot of little insights into the 1980’s pop culture scene and much-loved movies, music, and books about which I had no idea. RP1 was a cool read, which set me up with some pretty high expectations going into Ready Player Two (RP2).

I bought the second book a couple of years ago and, just after deciding to read it, I bumped into a reviewer who utterly slated it. I am, if nothing else, easily influenced, so reading a couple of f-bombs in a really short review which also mentioned something akin to “money-grab” and “repetition,” my heart honestly sank. Despite my expectations being crushed on the rocks of commercial reality, as viewed by the florally-languaged reviewer, I went into RP2 with an open mind and I was ready to enjoy another adventure with Wade Watts.

But, damn it. That reviewer was right.

RP2 is an object lesson in what I fervently hope never to do as an author, and a cautionary tale for all of us. Especially those who enjoy wild success on one their books. RP2 is replete with more trivia about 1980’s culture and even a little from the 1990’s, covering everything from games to children’s TV. And that is what killed it for me, by the time I reached page 222 and the world of Halycodonia. There is only so much trivia I can handle. Now, admittedly, I have a very low level of trivia tolerance. After all, I despise the game Trivial Pursuit with a passion reserved only for thieves, bullies, and Education Review Office functionaries. So this fact does not predispose me to endless trivia drip feeds. However, what made RP1 charming and fun, in part, has become the mill stone around the reader’s neck. It drags the book into pointlessness and the trivia adds nothing to the narrative.

A much bigger problem with RP2, which the above-mentioned review pointed out so colourfully, is the basic plot is another treasure-hunt. The Easter egg has gone, and now it’s the Seven Shards of the Siren, the alliteration belying the mediocrity of an essentially regurgitated premise. I was willing to run with it for awhile. There are hunts, and then there are hunts. RP2 falls into repeated pattern of teleport-hunt-complete task-teleport again, broken only by brief instances of “bad news” being introduced, or something else to pause the hunt, and a supposed set of other clues left by Og Morrow. The secondary plot of Og Morrow’s disappearance at the hands Anorak, (think CLU in Tron), almost rescues RP2 from the dungeon of despair. Almost.

And this where I think some are right in their harsh comments about RP2. It was not written, I think, with anything more to add to the narrative finished in RP1. It was written to capitalise on the popularity of the first book and milk a bit more success out of the series. On a business level, it makes sense.

But when you compare the RP1 and RP2 books to other series, the faults become glaring. In the Dune books, each book forms a new stage of the characters’ development and the movement of the plot is into new territory, so to speak. The narrative develops from the book before and leads the reader to the book following. That is because the story was always intended to span a large number of books from the get go, or at the very least, in the very early stages of the writing process. Lord of the Rings, another series, is a second case in point. The narrative expands from the first book, taking the characters into new situations and new tensions. There is a narrative arch which ranges from the first page of book one to the last page of book three. Tolkien and Herbert had also done the world building to back up their narratives, and it shows.

Unlike Lord of the Rings and Dune, RP1 would have been an excellent story even without RP2. The latter instalment feels like it has been tacked onto the end like a poorly sewn Taylor Swift patch on a perfectly fine denim jacket covered in Rancid and Sex Pistols patches and metal studs. In my opinion, this is where the whole point of RP2 has been lost, if ever it had a point beyond capitalising on the previous book’s popularity in the first place.

Sometimes, not publishing something is better for an existing book. And this where we, as authors, need to consider things carefully. I am not implying Ernest Cline did not deeply weigh up the pros and cons of publishing RP2. Of course, he did, and he probably had a whole tonne of other stakeholders saying it was a great idea. However, I think, in some cases, it is worth refraining from putting something out there if it is not going to contribute to an existing narrative you have already established in any meaningful way.

It is possible to keep adding to narratives in meaningful ways over vast spans of books. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and Randolph Lalonde’s Spinward Fringe are examples of great narratives continued over prodigious amounts of output. There are many more authors who have done the same. But they have done it for the right reasons: their characters’ stories were not finished yet.

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For my personal book reading, I drifted for years through different platforms, including the Fediverse’s Bookwyrm, and a bunch of others. It was not until I became a writer of anything beyond “hobbyist” that I found an actual use for Goodreads. I support other indie authors.

I do not like Goodreads and I keep my personal reading from it. Only a one or two authors know I have added their books to alternative platforms. However, I use Goodreads more for promoting other authors because that is where a tonne of readers…well…read. If the readers are there, then it is on Goodreads where a review has a more meaningful impact.

’s book Shadows of the Wall got a review (click the book cover) and the wonderfully sick mind of Zachry Wheeler produced the wicked funny Roy: The Most Chaotic Midlife in Cosmic History. Being part of the indie community has meant a bit more awareness of what it takes to get your books out there. I may not be able to buy a lot of books, but I sure can write some good reviews about what I do read.

One of the points I make is when I get hold of a book for free, which both of Zachry Wheeler’s books were, is that I make sure I get a review out there for them. This is a bit of a big deal for me from an ethical viewpoint. In my humble opinion, if an author has given someone a book for free, the least the recipient can is jot a few lines down, even if they did not love the book. I copy and paste reviews across my platforms sometimes, so I do cheat a little. But I think it is important to say thanks with a review, even a short one.

With so many cool writers out there pumping out words of wonder and delight, I cannot begin to wrap my head around the choices I have with what I can read. It is amazing to behold. The indie scene is in a really good state at the moment, even with the AI slopadrama infecting it all. There are good authors out there with real talent and human-focused processes. We can help keep it that way one review at a time.

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Season Cycle: Spring came out for the northern spring, but here in the Antipodes, the album came out at the start of autumn. Although the season is opposite of what Ed Herbers seemed to have in mind, the album still works on a tonne of different levels.

This short six-track, 24-minute EP covers a lot of depth with relatively short tracks for the genre, ranging from the shortest, at just over two minutes, to the longest, at just over five. Don’t be fooled. Herbers covers a lot of vibey droneness in that space.

The first thing noticeable is the increased use of the piano compared some of Herbers’ other albums. This fits right into the drone underlay, giving the tracks a neo-classical feel while not departing very much from the music for which Herbers is well-known. The music is easy, soothing, and calm. This is the type of music you can sit down and just ooze into the sound, losing yourself in a soundscape of caressing notes and hums. Or you can have it going in the background while you do something else, like write a review about an Ed Herbers album.

The tracks begin with a sombre, serious feel. The slowness evoking the beginning of spring, those first few weeks when the world is still awakening from the three-month hibernation of winter and the melting of the snow in some places. When you hit “Dawn Chorus,” the energy picks up with the introduction of a sort of whimsy and joy. This is not to say you are going to get thunderous beats of the type found in a psytrance rave created by people slamming back far too much ecstasy and Red Bull, but rather the mood subtly shifts as your journey into spring reaches a milestone. It is from this central track where the EP pivots into a celebration of the season’s new life as you travel towards the finer times of summer and the return of life in all its riotous colour to the previously grey world around you.

For those who live in a four-season region, you’re going to be able to relate to it really well. For many of us who live in the sub-tropics or tropics, where the seasons are basically wet, and hot and wet, there is less to connect with on an ontological level. However, the music itself still can be related to turning points in the year. In Aotearoa, we are moving towards Matariki at the time of writing, and this album would definitely work as a reflection on the turning point of the year where our planting season (kōanga) comes about after this important week in the Māori year. The promise of new life and new abundance in the world around us, in nature, is something Season Cycle: Spring can still evoke even in a cyclone-prone region like the South Pacific, as it is in spring.

Ed Herbers is someone I have long been a fan of, and he produces some of the most reflective, meditative sounds I know. When he and Exit Chamber (of whom I am a real fanboy) collaborated on Self-, it was sign from God. My point is that anything Herbers produces is fantastic. In Season Cycle: Spring, Herbers has kept his quality, as well as pushed his art in a new direction. This is worth getting and adding to your drone playlist.

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A.M. Blackmere has said mere violence and gore are not what make something truly terrifying. Rather, it is the quiet disintegration of one’s mental frames of reference and psychological coherence that make something truly horrifying and scary. I would say this is completely correct. Especially in the writings of Blackmere.

Shadows of the Wall is the story of Aelius Corven, an officer on Hadrian’s Wall in the final days of the Roman Empire’s presence in Britain. Haunted by the loss of his own family, he has to wrestle with the reality the Empire is simply leeching away and the Picts are beginning to bring their own mark to a world that has not changed for over 300 years. Corven finds himself north of the wall among the very people of whom his men have long thought bogeymen of unadulterated evil and chaos.

The story can be a bit slow compared to more overtly violent and action-focused horror stories, but that is the plus for Shadows of the Wall. There is violence. After all, the story centres on a fort of soldiers who remain in conflict. However, the violence is not the reason for the horror. That reaches far more deeply into the spirit of the characters themselves, as well as the world in which they work out their own survival. The mental aspect of the characters, most especially Corven himself, is what brings the crawling fear to the reader.

The world itself, imbued with an almost sentient nature, becomes something to be feared in contrast with the security of the Roman world and its identity bestowed upon those who embrace the Empire. However, even those who cling tenaciously to their identities as soldiers of Rome recognise the security in such categories has gone. Some react with a desire to go out in a blaze of glory, while others cling to crutches like useless ossuaries of the past. Corven has no such luxuries.

Every element is brought to highlight the horror as viewed from the perspective of Corven and those around him. Mist is no longer simply a mist, but something imbued with haunting menace. The Picts, considered by the Romans a fearful and vicious people, are imbued with a relentless inevitability that rolls right over the false and failing safety nets of a world in decline.

Blackmere weaves a syrupy, miasmic horror which draws you in and suffocates you in the same mists in which Corven finds himself lost, seeing the past return and harrow his sense of self. The scenes, the world, the mystery, are all enhanced by a careful pacing which avoids gaudy explosions of gore. This is a measured, stable decent into the horror of what once was but is now a foetid corpse. The fear, the creeping fingers of death, is palpable and leaves an aftertaste.

While Shadows of the Wall does explode into action at some point, that is not the main focus of the book. The reader is invited to walk with Corven, and, in some ways, become Corven. Blackmere asks us to imagine the hard-to-feel - the decline and disintegration of everything we have known and found our security in.

What would you do if you were a legionary on Hadrian’s Wall, left after Rome and retreated back to mainland Europe?

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