sholio | Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

helen_keeble recommended this LitRPG series, and I am having a GREAT time, although I'm only about 80% of the way through the first book (but honestly I don't expect my opinion to change a whole lot; it might really surprise me later, but this strikes me as a series where what you see is basically what you get).

But what you get is really a lot of fun - light, entertaining, very funny, with a lot more humanity and a darker edge than I was expecting. Also, it's a good Baby's First LitRPG (a genre I've bounced off repeatedly in the past) because there's a solid in-universe explanation for the stats, leveling, and other aspects of the genre.

Basically, Earth is now an alien reality game show.

In one moment, the vast majority of Earth's population is exterminated (everyone who was indoors or inside a vehicle or other contained space - they're all recycled by an alien resource development company, along with just about every other human-made thing on the planet). Everyone else finds themselves plunged into a world-sized dungeon with nothing but whatever they happen to be wearing at the time, where they must compete against an escalating series of challenges, televised for a galactic audience and run by a psychotic AI with a foot fetish and a ruthless alien corporation. The hero - Carl - was outside in a freezing night in order to rescue his ex-girlfriend's pedigreed Persian cat Princess Donut from a tree. Now he's in a dungeon, forced to compete against all too real enemies as well as fellow contestants, with a mind-controlled virtual pop-up display giving him descriptions of his and his opponents' stats, and a virtually unlimited inventory space. Princess Donut almost immediately gains a level-up bonus to human-level intelligence and becomes Carl's partner in the dungeon crawl, a squishy mage with sky-high Charisma next to Carl's tank. Who knew all that time playing first-person shooter games with no company except his cat was going to pay off ...

The whole vibe of the book definitely replicates old-school dungeon crawl games (the nostalgia I had reading this for playing roguelikes in high school was through the roof) and BOY does it gamify that general "what is in the BOX" anticipation as the characters get loot drops of varying levels of banality, awesomeness, and/or ridiculousness. The enemies ("mobs") range from basic dungeon enemy types (goblins, orcs, etc), to plausibly-deniably inspired by 80s/90s/2000s games, to hilariously inventive, described with in-game pop-ups in a style that I can best indicate by quoting one of my early favorites:

Bad Llama. Level 3.
It’s a llama, but it’s bad. If he were human, he’d be covered in prison tattoos and would be hanging out in front of the Circle K hitting on 14-year-old girls. They might be willing to sell you something if you have good stuff to trade.

The Bad Llama loot-drops bags of meth when it dies. (It turns out you can trade this to other NPCs as a fairly high-value item.)

And that gives you a pretty good idea of what the book's game voice is like. I cannot believe this series has not been turned into a movie, TV show, and/or video game yet.

But the book isn't a completely ridiculous series of farcical video game shenanigans. There's actually quite a bit of worldbuilding, things going on behind the scenes, meta thoughts about why the game does what it does (e.g. why trailer park llamas, what cultural stereotype exactly is it exploiting there?) and some genuinely tragic or poignant or simply nightmare-fuel moments. Also, it's about as gory as you would expect for a book in which the video game mechanics are described in real-world(ish) terms. And I genuinely like the characters, not just Carl and Princess Donut (who have a surprisingly affecting relationship; he really likes that cat, and vice versa) but also a number of fellow game players and NPCs - who are mostly real people who have been incepted into the game from various worlds and/or previous incarnations of the game. It's fun, it's post-apocalyptic, it's occasionally traumatizing and awful, and I'm not sure how long it'll manage to hold my interest given the overall sameness of the premise, but I expect I'll be here for the second book, at least.

(If you liked the mechanical/problem-solving/worldbuilding aspects of Piers Anthony's books [but better written, with less sexism and creepiness], or played a lot of arcade and early computer action/dungeon-crawl games in the 80s and 90s, you are probably an ideal target audience for this. Interestingly, one thing I tend to dislike in fantasy/SFF are overly precious magical cat characters, and Princess Donut is just a believable enough cat and a complex enough character - she's a self-centered asshole, but she's also really sweet and brave and devoted to her people - that I actually really like her, which is a genuinely hard sell for me.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Princess Donut almost immediately gains a level-up bonus to human-level intelligence and becomes Carl's partner in the dungeon crawl, a squishy mage with sky-high Charisma next to Carl's tank.

As a person who loved "The Game of Rat and Dragon," while I may not pursue this series, I approve strongly of this part of its premise.

Honestly, I was braced for the authorial/protagonist relationship with the cat to be kind of unpleasantly condescending in the way that some male authors writing about small furry pets can sometimes be - but actually it's incredibly sweet, and the cat is a character as interesting and complex as the viewpoint character she's partnered with. This is definitely not a series for everyone, but I'm finding it a very entertaining way to spend an evening.

Honestly, I was braced for the authorial/protagonist relationship with the cat to be kind of unpleasantly condescending in the way that some male authors writing about small furry pets can sometimes be - but actually it's incredibly sweet, and the cat is a character as interesting and complex as the viewpoint character she's partnered with.

I am glad the series not only avoids that pitfall, but does something really nice in its place!

(I agree with you that it seems completely confusing that the books have not yet been turned into a TV series.)

I suspect it may be only a matter of time before it’s optioned as a tv show (if it isn’t already) - the book are now coming out in trad print(with excellent covers), the author has run phenomenally successful kickstarters for special editions, has a thriving merch store, and is about to launch a comic book version. I feel it’s one of those series which is starting to break out of its original small(ish) niche and find a very receptive wider audience. I first came across it as a recommendation in a romantasy Facebook group, despite the entire series not containing a lick of romance (unless you include the [redacted for spoilers] later character who propositions everything in sight regardless of gender or species).

One thing that really struck me as I read the series is that the majority of the time, any new character is a woman/female. Not at all in LitRPG harem way (that trope gets specifically called out and discarded in the very first book), just as kind of a default. There’s a _very_ wide range of female characters, and I suspect it’s deliberate.

Anyway, I’m now caught up on the series on kindle, and impatiently waiting for the next one…

One thing that really struck me as I read the series is that the majority of the time, any new character is a woman/female. Not at all in LitRPG harem way (that trope gets specifically called out and discarded in the very first book), just as kind of a default. There’s a _very_ wide range of female characters, and I suspect it’s deliberate.

Yeah, no further than I've read so far, I really appreciated the number and variety of female characters, including both enemies and allies. (Even the team of players who are hunting other players are a man and a woman.) And also the book actively pointing out that it isn't that kind of book, heh. For one thing, it makes Carl's cheating girlfriend feel much less of a stand-in for "all women everywhere" (which could easily be a thing in a book like this, but I think the book avoids it neatly - that's *her*, not women in general, and there's no indication that Carl feels that way, either).

Also agreed that it's breaking out of the LitRPG niche and finding a wider audience. It's actually a *great* example of how a book can do that when it hits all the genre tropes but also has a great deal of things in it to appeal to a wide audience, including humor, a varied cast, and a pretty clever conceit for why the genre tropes work the way they do. And also, it's just good!

I love this series! Kind of stalled out on a library request logjam, I should see if the next one's available yet.

There's a great slow burn bit we don't see often enough with Uplifted Animals as Princess Donut starts to *understand* things that she remembers that I thought was cleverly done.

I have _really_ enjoyed the way the author has managed to balance exploration of the characters’ various traumas with critique of trauma-as-televised-entertainment. Avoiding spoilers since Layla isn’t there yet, but there have been numerous points in the series where I was genuinely moved, while also thinking “daaaaamn, that’s clever”

I know the old saw 'don't judge a book by it's cover' but they are much better books than I was expecting from a series called Dungeon Crawler Carl.

I did hear it was going to be a tv series, but haven't seen anything else on that.

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

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