Synopsis
A man must fight for his planet against impossible odds when gamers from Earth attempt to remotely annihilate it in this epic, fast-paced novel from the New York Times bestselling author of the smash-hit Dungeon Crawler Carl.
All colonist Oliver Lewis ever wanted to do was run the family ranch with his sister, maybe play a gig or two with his band, and keep his family’s aging fleet of intelligent agriculture bots ticking as long as possible. He figures it will be a good thing when the transfer gate finally opens all the way and restores instant travel and full communication between Earth and his planet, New Sonora. But there’s a complication.
Even though the settlers were promised they’d be left in peace, Earth’s government now has other plans. The colossal Apex Industries is hired to commence an “eviction action.” But maximizing profits will always be Apex’s number one priority. Why spend money printing and deploying AI soldiers when they can turn it into a game? Why not charge bored Earthers for the opportunity to design their own war machines and remotely pilot them from the comfort of their homes?
The game is called Operation Bounce House.
Oliver and his friends soon find themselves fighting for their lives against machines piloted by gamers who’ve paid a premium for the privilege. With the help of an old book from his grandfather and a bucket of rusty parts, Oliver is determined to defend the only home he’s ever known.
Review
Around the mid-point of 2025, my buddy and former Staring Into The Abyss co-host Rich messaged me about this crazy series he’d been binging on Audible called Dungeon Crawler Carl. I was hesitant to join in, as nothing about the series sounded like anything I would enjoy. In fact, it sounded exactly like the kind of pop-culture-laden Ready Player One nonsense I actively avoided. To top it all off, there was a talking, super-intelligent, magic-powered cat, the kind of anthropomorphizing bullshit that Dean Koontz had killed for me decades ago. But then more and more people whose taste I trusted started carrying on about this series. Word of mouth is a hell of a drug, gang. I’d gotten a discount on a returning Audible membership and spent the credit on the first Carl book and… I got hooked. And then, not just hooked, but obsessed. That talking animal nonsense I’ve been so repelled by historically? My favorite character ever. #PrincessPosse #DonutHoles
Matt Dinniman didn’t just make me a convert to his growing fandom with his goofy intergalactic video game turned real-life horror hiding deeper meanings underneath it all, he turned me into a goddamn cult member. I am officially a Dungeon Crawler Carl ride-or-die series fanatic. I’ve even bought a couple t-shirts to prove it, and have converted my wife in the process (she’s on book three currently). All this to say, when the sillily titled Operation Bounce House came up on NetGalley, I put in an immediate request.
In another era, by another author, the title alone would have earmarked this as a book that was very specifically Not For Me. But it was Dinniman, and the Carl books have very clearly taught me the object lesson of not judging a book by its cover, synopsis, brief catch-all character descriptions, and/or easy genre categorizations.
Operation Bounce House couldn’t be further from the Dungeon Crawler Carl series in a lot of ways. This one’s a one-and-done standalone (until a sequel comes along to prove me wrong, of course), and tonally it’s more serious, more desperate. It’s bleak, at times dismayingly hopeless. Of course, it’s also similar to the Carl books in a number of ways. It has humor, and although it’s a bit more infrequent it can still be just as ribald, scatological, and edgelordy, but it doesn’t push the envelope too much on the overtly sillier aspects that we all buy into back in the Dungeon. Operation Bounce House is a video-game writ large – think Red Dawn by way of Fortnite – but Dinniman smartly inverts the experience here. Rather than being forced into the game as a player who must abide by certain rules and play the game in order to survive, our protagonists are external to the game itself and have to survive against wave after wave of brainwashed players as they find themselves the unwitting victims of a planetary siege. They’re farmers who have been branded as terrorists by a massive gaming conglomerate cum private military contractor they’ve never heard of and are forced to adopt guerrilla tactics to fight an invading drone army. If they follow the game’s rules, they die. If they want to live, they have to move fast and break everything.
One doesn’t have to look too far to see the politics, policies, military tactics, and cultural influences behind Operation Bounce House’s story. An evil billionaire fascist using a high-tech platform to radicalize its user base into paying him to fight a fictional war/land grab disguised as a video game, and brainwashed into believing that their targets are terrorist insurgents hellbent on destroying their way of life on Earth because they’ve been deemed outsiders by said billionaire. Hell, if you live in Minnesota currently, you might be able to look out your window and catch a glimpse of what Dinniman’s fictionalizing in this violent science fiction opus. If you live in Greenland, you might be looking at news headlines that sound eerily similar. If nothing else, this book is most certainly timely. One can only hope that it’s not entirely too prescient, even if we are just about half-way there already, but frankly that requires more faith in evil, soulless, ghoulish billionaires than I’m capable of mustering.
Aided by an AI named Roger, farmer Oliver, his sister Lulu, and their band of friends become the last bastion for hope and survival on the planet of New Sonora. None of them are fighters, let alone warriors, and they’ve only known relative peace and stability despite the hardships of their daily living. The biggest confrontations they’ve had thus far have been dealing with a surly, old farmer who’s been training his supposedly magic chickens. They’re the sons and daughters of immigrants who traveled the stars on generation ships to build a better life away from the growing despotism and dystopia of Earth. And now they are targets in an intergalactic war to increase capital and further fatten rich, white men’s bank accounts simply because they don’t live on Earth. They’re foreigners, and thus they are terrorists. But Apex Industries wanted a war, and a war they shall have.
Part of Roger’s programming is to protect the farm and Oliver’s family, and it’s hugely entertaining, not to mention a rich and much needed catharsis, to see his military tactics evolve and grow ever more unhinged. I’ve never cheered so mightily for the potential destruction of Earth as I have here! A war built off the model of online gaming has been brought to Oliver’s doorstep, and Roger smartly uses archaic (for Earth) online gamer tactics to fight back, through a combination of amped up phone pranks, insults, and swatting against its user base (AKA psychological warfare!), while Oliver and company go at them with more traditional armaments. It all makes for a deft, fun bit of techno-terror insurgency, and certain segments of the book – particularly its overarching message of refusing to play along with fascists and letting them control the narrative as they seek to destroy you and your world – hit especially hard, especially while reading amidst the recent real-world execution of Renee Nicole Good by gestapo-like, federally-sponsored terrorist ICE agents and their increasingly unhinged assaults against US citizens and immigrants alike, as goaded by the fascist, authoritarian, allegedly pedophiliac, dim-witted, dementia-addled man-baby insurrectionist and traitor to America, the President of the United States.
Although it’s set on a world far, far away, plenty of Operation Bounce House hits real fucking close to home, at times uncomfortably so. This is a book of the moment, and Dinniman brings the vibes, energy, and revolutionary can-do spirit we all need right now. Operation Bounce House isn’t just cathartic and laugh-out-loud funny, it’s the kind of sanity-saving, maybe even soul-saving, high-octane sci-fi fuel we need here in 2026. His exploration of war, oppression, and othering is delightfully anarchic, and should be taken as a warning by power-hungry despots and their supporters everywhere. If you spend enough time working to dehumanize people and call them terrorists simply because they don’t want to be slaughtered by racist shitbags seeking to enrich their bottom lines, maybe don’t be surprised when they fight back.
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