Dungeon Crawler Carl

REWARD: A brand new book obsession to make your entire personality!

Such beautiful hardcovers, btw. I’m not jealous, you are!

Since the start of this year, I found myself throwing myself into a brand new book series, one that I have read so voraciously that I have sped through pretty much the whole thing in record time (for me). And that series has been Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman.

I had been hearing about this series for a little while before finally diving in, from regularly coming up in Daniel Greene’s Fantasy News YouTube videos, to seeing various other readers and writers of science fiction and fantasy namedropping the series, or the author. I was aware that there was a new set of hardcovers collecting the series coming out, and when the first one, the aptly titled Dungeon Crawler Carl, popped up in my local bookstore, I figured it was time to finally give it a go.

Little did I know this series would then take over pretty much all of my downtime. And I have loved it for that

The cover artwork for the Kindle and Audiobook editions of the series

Welcome to Dungeon Crawler World: Earth!

The set up for the first novel, and subsequent series, of Dungeon Crawler Carl is a post-apocalyptic, satirical LitRPG with some mild isekai and increasingly sci-fi elements. We follow ex-Coast Guard vet Carl, who runs out into the midwinter cold in the middle of the night when his cheating ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning Persian cat, Princess Donut, jumps outside their apartment building. Upon getting his hands on the feline and turning to re-enter the safety and warmth of home, every manmade structure on Earth collapses in on itself, killing everyone still inside. Before shock can set in, but while hypothermia rapidly threatens to, a bizarre massive gate and starewell appears. Drawn by the promise of warmth and survival, Carl and Donut enter the gate and are transported into a strange dungeon like setting before an announcer suddenly screams what is happening.

Earth is the latest world to host Dungeon Crawler World, a galaxy-wide reality game wherein the survivors of Earth can try and descend it’s increasingly difficult eighteen floors to try and survive and win their freedom and join galactic society. Oh, and Donut almost immediately takes a potion that makes her sapient and changes her from a pet to another Crawler, and in fact the leader of her and Carl’s party.

From there, what ensues is a wonderfully crass, side-splittingly funny, and surprisingly devastatingly gut-punching story of action, survival and hopefully revenge as Carl, Donut and a growing cast of Crawlers and fascinating NPCs delve deeper into the dungeon and find try to not just beat the game, but demolish the society that has thrown them into this.