Name: Dungeon Crawler Carl
Series: Dungeon Crawler Carl #1
Author: Matt Dinniman
Publisher: Dandy House
Format: Kindle (through Kindle Unlimited)
Genres: Adult, Science Fiction / Fantasy, Dystopia, Adventure
Spice Rating: None
Rating:
Synopsis: Goodreads
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
Review:
I think Dungeon Crawler Carl is really having its moment on the internet right now. It’s seeping into book circles that it wasn’t in before and I’m starting to see it everywhere! I think the main reason for that is also why the likes of Ready Player One was everywhere at one point… It’s FUN.
Dungeon Crawler Carl follows our MMC Carl as he finds himself witnessing the end of the world, in his underwear. Everything around him sank into the ground, killing everyone that had a roof of any kind over their heads (except he wasn’t sure about umbrellas). And anyone surviving were invited to take part in the Dungeon. An 18 level dungeon reminiscent of video games or table top RPGs. He’s not alone though, because with him at the time of the collapse was his (ex)-girlfriends cat, Princess Donut.
Dungeon Crawler Carl really is a lot of fun – I made the ultimate decision to just physically use my eyeballs to read this instead of immersive reading it like I had originally planned, and I do somewhat regret that – even though I know that my reading speed is faster. Because the whole time I was reading this and laughing, all I could think was that this had the potential to be a phenomenal audiobook – or better yet TV Show.
There is a lot of humour within the pages of Dungeon Crawler Carl, but also gruesome scenes, unpleasentries and a shockingly horny AI (it has a thing for feet and this comes up a number of times for an AI…). The writing is straight forward which helps make the story easy to follow. I imagine if you don’t have any kind of background with video games then some of it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense even with Matt’s careful explanations of things – but even then, I think you’d pick it up as you went.
The only reason I wasn’t able to give Dungeon Crawler Carl a 5 star rating was just because the ending felt like it had been written to be a gripping ‘give me the sequel now’ type of cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel that way to me. It fell a little flat. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still planning on reading book 2, I’m just not foaming at the mouth to get to it. I think my experience is not like others – I know quite a few people who started DCC and found they couldn’t stop and they just kept reading… So, I guess it depends on what kinds of cliff hangers you’re used to!
So it’s is a 4.5 star rating from me, and a reminder that this is a hell of a good time. The AI is hillarious too, the personality injected into the achievements and patch notes give me life with this story – they’re just so funny. Princess Donut is an unexpected joy – though I haven’t fully decided if I love or loath her. And Carl is an excellent MMC – he’s kind, he’s smart, he cares! I’m excited to watch him grow throughout the series. I don’t understand the behind the scenes aspects of it, but the what’s in front of us aspects were great. I definitely will be continuing this series!
Congratulations! You’ve earned your first achievement: Crazy Cat Lady.
Reading With Tyler 
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