Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

Alright!! You did it!! You won!! I finally picked up a copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl!! And yes, it was as good as you said!!

A LOT of people recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl to me - friends from grad school (Go Blue!), friends from work, and a random women I met at a book store in Redwood City! It was finally… the right time. Work has been blegh and I wanted to escape into a brand new world! A fun world! This is a perfect escapist read.

The first ~60 or so pages of* Dungeon Crawler Carl* were not working for me. Carl did not seem likeable (sorry guys you should know that I hate cigarettes!), the (impending) break-up was a bummer, and the whole alien intro take-over was a little hard to grok. But sometimes… you need to suspend disbelief and simply accept the written word as reality. Once you do so, DCC becomes undeniably exciting and impossible to put down.

Much like an RPG, you need to learn the mechanics before you have fun. Yeah, it’s kind of annoying to learn about classes, ability points, spells, and inventories… but! It sets up some hilarious and fascinating hijinks. Without the knowledge of skills, how can we appreciate Princess Donut’s absurdly over-powered charisma? Or Carl’s incredible foot strength, why he has to be shoe-less to max out his power? DCC leans into the absurdly humorous situation and characters. The world ends, and Carl + his ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning cat have to fight to survive (and it’s all televised across the universe!). They fight literal goblins, oversized evil gym bros, and meth-head llamas (just to name a few). Crawlers have to take breaks from battling for their lives to go on a “Watch what happens live” style commentary show.

Despite the humor, Dungeon Crawler Carl has a lot of heart. Carl loves Princess Donut (and was even planning to cat-nap her in the break-up). He truly resents the lack of dignity that the alien overlords have given humanity. The retiree Meadowlark arc was tragic and beautiful and kind. I wonder what I would choose: to continue my struggle or to end it peacefully… in a revamped waffle house with my loved ones.

There’s a lot of depth and mystery, which left me excited to read the next novel! Who is Agatha really? What’s the political intrigue with the Orcs? What race will Princess Donut choose? What happened with Odette and Mordecai? Will we ever get to meet Lucia???