Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

TL;DR: Worth every bit of hype, this was phenomenal.
Source: NetGalley! Thank you so much to the publisher! I also bought… three copies of this. I’m just saying. I loved it.

Plot: Carl luckily (?) escapes the apocalypse and ends up on a game show just trying to survive. Add a sassy cat and it’s a mess.
Characters: I loved all of them and will not be accepting questions at this time.
Setting: This was shockingly well drawn considering how simple and yet complex the Dungeon was.
Magic: There is no clearly magic system yet, but the System at it’s roots is very easy to understand.

Thoughts:

I’ve heard all the hype about Dungeon Crawler Carl online. As a reader of LitRPG I’ve seen every recommendation so when I saw this was getting a traditional release I thought, why not? Honestly I’m kind of mad it took me this long to get to it. I laughed and gasped my way through this and I’m already working on the second book. Consider me convinced.

The story is simple. Carl is out trying to catch his (soon to be ex) girlfriend’s pampered cat when everything around him is squished flat. A System message comes up and tells him the world has effectively ended. And to continue to survive he and the only 10 million or so people left, must go into the Dungeon entrances that are going to appear all over the world. From there a competition will begin. Those that survive and make it into the Dungeon are going to become ‘Crawlers’ and the entire thing is televised to the universe.

This is a funny book. Not ‘hehe’ funny, but Funny. Matt Dinniman is cutting in his humor too. We see clever jokes about the worst and mild of humanity, with reason. The System is going out of it’s way to make humanity seem gross and awful. That means while we’re laughing we have moments of stark and dark reality cut through. I was distraught over Carl’s first big boss.

This is a great book, I loved everything about it. The sassy and weirdly foot obsessed AI, the talking cat – did I mention the TALKING CAT? I have been trying to convince everyone in my life to read this – you should too.

6 out of 5 Gold Asshole Loot Boxes