Dungeon Crawler Carl

The author of Dungeon Crawler Carl has a constantly battle at the line of obnoxious and manages to largely stay on the good side of it, making the absurdity enjoyable and funny throughout. It is a light-hearted affair that plays on many gaming tropes, not just tabletop games or RPGs.

Light-hearted affair as it is, the tone can be a bit weird. There is some attempt at inserting questions of existentialism and body horror that feel out-of-place given the sheer goofiness of everything going on. The silly world would either need to work as a foil and contrast to highlight a more serious message, or tone down the absurdity a little in order for those sort of emotions to play. And when the line crosses to the wrong side of obnoxious it can be a little off-putting in moments.

The pacing and action makes it very easy to blast through. It's not going to provide so much of a tabletop experience with much focus on builds or core elements, but it will provide a lot of laughs. The heavy lore-building and endless amount of details crammed in via crass humour flesh out the game world and make it feel like so much more than a gimmick. It taps into the same visceral part of the brain that zombie stories do, causing the reader to think about how they'd approach things.

Dungeon Crawler Carl's biggest stumble on the way to the end of the dungeon is that there is nothing resembling an ending. Not so much as a cliffhanger, the book just kind of stops, as if the writer realized they had rambled for too long and no one would read this if time was put it to give something to make it feel like this wrapped, even if a lot needed to still be settled in subsequent volumes.

It's not a book for everyone, but for its target, it's no surprise that it would take off. But just like Carl, it's a little rough around the edges.

I forgot where I stumbled upon this book, but I gave it away as a present and the guy read it recently and was full of praise. So I read it, too, and can tell you: wow! Easy to read, funny, and page-turning by itself.

Aliens come to Earth and, reminding us of the Volorians from Douglas Adams, present legal claim to all of Earth, which we humans could have avoided by making or own claim before a court we never existed.

Very shortly after most humans are dead and all the rest is offered to fight through a dungeon. Whoever makes it to level 18 can reclaim Earth.

And so we go down with Carl and his cat into the dungeon. Turns out, Carl is the first to bring a pet cat into the dungeon, so they get a buff and thus, Princess Donut is a Dungeon Crawler just like Carl himself. A former show cat, she is now bent on becoming famous, for the dungeon crawl is watched on universal TV around the, well, the universe.

Sure. The story is a bit repetitive, but has anyone of you ever played Elden Ring or the like? Of course they are repetitive! Yet the story is fun as hell, it is interesting to see how Carl and Donut do, and the game messages are fun as well.

I went ahead and ordered book 2 and 3 of this series, because at the end of the first book, Carl and Princess Donut made it to the 3rd level (race and profession can be choosen) and did I mention it's 18 levels overall?