Whereas volumes one through four covered the quest for Falin, Delicious in Dungeon Volume Five begins a new arc which not only pits several adventuring groups against each other, but ultimately the dungeon’s mad magician.
Volume Five begins by revealing Falin to be the pawn of the dungeon’s creator, a powerful elven magician who seems to think Falin is the dragon, having metamorphosed into a new form. Whether or not this is true, Falin thinks she’s Falin, but is, body and soul, subject to the magician’s whim. While we learn that she can reduce Falin to speechlessness, or to a bubbling, bloody goo, at will, we don’t really learn what the dungeon creator’s driving ambition is, other than to slap Laios and company silly. Which he does.
After our heroes recover from their loss under the hospitality of some friendly orcs, the camera shifts to Kabru and his B team. Remember the B team? The adventurers slain in an earlier volume of Delicious in Dungeon? Having been recalled to life, they usurp about a third of the fifth volume in an arc that explores the opportunistic crime that thrives in a resurrection culture: some helpers lurk behind adventuring parties in the hope that those heroes will die, then cart their dead bodies to revivers for a finder’s fee, and others hasten that death by murdering adventurers, whom they then take back for their reward. Our second stringers have some understandable objections to this, and execute street justice on these Good Samaritans. While they otherwise seem sensible characters, they have developed a bee in their bonnet about Laios, Marcille, Chilchuck, and Senshi, whom they assume to be deep-dyed villains due to the way our heroes’ adventures backfire on them in the shape of one misfortune or another.
The B team arc ends with the introduction of the C team, which centers around an old party member, Shuro. You need not flip through previous volumes of Delicious in Dungeon, because unlike the B team, Shuro’s involvement with Laios, Marcille, and Chilchuck predates the series, and his entire party are fresh faces to the reader. Including several wonder women and a sort-of-kawaii ogress with a personality not unlike the carpet monster in old Warner Brothers cartoons, Shuro’s party is more captivating than the B team.
While Kabru and Laios both want to battle the dungeon magician, Kabru’s animosity for Laios may precipitate a more immediate conflict, with Shuro’s group either acting as the pivotal forces in that free-for-all, or as the controlling element that defuses a battle.
No matter how much worldbuilding goes into a fictional setting, the second story arc of an ongoing series often has a few hiccups compared to the first, as initially the creator has only to draw a starting scene, then follow its narrative arrows, while the second start involves not effacing anything that has gone before. That said, Volume Five marks an extremely uncertain beginning for this story arc. While there are powerful scenes and character moments, they lack cohesion to the point that this fictional world seems to be losing focus. While the new characters are appealing, I can’t help thinking that they were created ex nihilo to rescue the storyteller, as like arrows, these characters are not only straight forward but pointed in the direction of the plot. If Volume Five was enjoyable, and chock full of admirable pictures and well-crafted dialogue, it was also distressingly under the bar set by the previous volumes.
Yen Press sent the review copy.
Related posts:
You Might Also Like
