44
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
44 points (100.0% liked)
Science Fiction
19312 readers
48 users here now
Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction
December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.
- Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
- Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
- Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
- Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
- Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
The cat goes in to the dungeon with him and is gifted with sentience immediately, becoming the protagonist's sassy partner. It's cheesey fun.
As others have pointed out, the book has a lot of over the top violence and death, so you might want to stay away. On the other hand, though, the author is far more into gore and comic book ultra violence than cruelty. Many people find Princess Donut -- the cat annoying -- but by book five no great harm has befallen her or any of the other protagonists.
To quote the book #5:
Tap for spoiler
Book 5 is just scratching the surface, but the tones get worse, not better, at 5 you should understand this about the story.
To say it’s not cruel, is so weird, and a few of the nonmain protagonists are gone, they don’t stay the same from book to book.
To quote Dinnamin
I totally hear you. But the reason I disagree is that I think writers have a choice in how a death is supposed to strike the audience, and Dinniman is like a D&D GM who acts a lot tougher than he is.
George R.R. Martin is the real deal: he's a ruthless writer of huge stakes: Ned Stark's death is designed to be as distressing as possible. It's intended to leave the reader with the devestated feeling that the world is highly unjust; that the more honorable the character, the more danger they're in; that the reader should be in a constant state of concern that the characters they care about could at any moment not only die, but -- more importantly for fiction imo -- be rendered meaningless. He is disgraced in death, and it's deeply painful for the reader.
Conversely, Matt Dinniman is, imo, basically a softy. When good characters die, they leave a mark. Their friends mourn; they are honored and avenged; their lives leave indelible marks on the trajectory of the story. It's sad, but it's very sweet sorrow.
That might change in the later books, but so far, Dinniman has been very gentle on readers when it counts.