The fourth level of the dungeon is the Iron Tangle, a subway network twisted into a maze of trains and stations where direction and distance stop behaving as expected. Carl and Princess Donut must find a way through a place crowded with monsters, with the exit always seeming just a few stops away.

A puzzle with a public price

The dungeon is also a galaxy-wide game show, and Carl and Donut’s place on its top-ten list brings a new danger: both have bounties on their heads. To solve the floor’s deadly puzzle, they have to work alongside other crawlers while weighing whom they can trust.

Cooperation in the dungeon

The Iron Tangle makes the search for a route out a shared problem: the crawlers are working together, and the key to untangling the floor may lie in an apparently useless book. This third novel in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series also includes part three of the print edition’s bonus story, “Backstage at the Pineapple Cabaret.”