Dungeon Crawler Carl: A LitRPG/Gamelit Adventure Paperback – September 21, 2020

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman was so much fun to read! I devoured this book in 2 days.From page 1, Carl lets you know exactly who he is, and he doesn't disappoint. No matter what terrible choices he's given, or what absolutely ridiculous odds he faces- he handles it all his way. He's smarter, more perceptive, and more creative than he, Donut, or the AI give him credit for, and he always kept me wondering how he'd handle each obstacle.The world building was topnotch, everything unfolding organically - the reader taking it all in at the same time as Carl. All characters, even monsters, have depth that poor Carl just barely scratches the surface of, and he's torn between sympathizing or straight up murdering them. The system AI is snarcky and had me laughing out loud, startling those around me several times.I love Donut, she behaves precisely the way I envision a cat in a monster dungeon would behave. The interactions between Donut and Carl are fantastic, but the way they work so well together is beautiful. On a related note, Carl's catchphrase is currently my favorite hero catchphrase of all time.Even if you've never played an RPG, D&D, or read this type of book before, Matt doesn't bog you down with lists of rules or "game play" functionality- maybe 2 paragraphs here and there as Carl reviews what he recalls from his stints playing those type of games or going over his understanding of things that have happened so far. So everything flowed well and didn't detract from the story - it was neatly embedded.True to video game RPGs, the fights are bloody, gory things. Carl doesn't dwell on the details, but the reader gets some interesting descriptors and comparisons when things go down.I highly recommend this book for anyone who likes fantasy, has ever enjoyed playing an RPG or reading a choose your own adventure book- except it's poor Carl choosing- or being voluntold, and you're just along for the ride. Remember, he's just a regular guy without pants, with a champion Persian cat, trying to survive the televised apocalypse. All for your entertainment, so enjoy.

A Coast Guard veteran and all around good guy, Carl, lives in an apartment with his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut. On a cold, winter night, Donut slips out of a window and gets stuck up a tree. And it’s a good thing she does! Wearing nothing but a jacket, boxers, and a pair of slippers that don’t fit, Carl goes outside to try to coax her down. He’s just about retrieved the cat, and then it happens.The whole world is changed. In the blink of an eye, every building, car, and piece of technology on the planet is flattened. Smooshed. Gone. A bodiless voice announces that anyone who doesn’t want to live off whatever is left on the planet will need to enter stairs. Carl and the cat do so, and that’s when the fun starts.It seems the galaxy has had a long-running and massively popular television program that follows “dungeon crawls”—classic role-playing/video game scenarios where adventurers go into a medieval dungeon, explore, fight monsters, win treasure, gain experience, become more powerful, and then proceed to deeper, harder levels. Earth has been selected to serve as the setting for the current season. That’s right. The Earth has been destroyed for the sake of a galactic television game. By entering the stairwell, Carl, Donut, and a couple million other humans have become participants in this game. Instead of remaining a pet, Donut is made into a fellow “crawler,” like Carl. She can speak, and reason, and fight—all with the personality one would expect from a cat named Princess DonutThe rules to this galactically televised dungeon crawl are intricate. But essentially, Carl and Donut begin to mentally see stat screens, just like in an RPG video game: health, various skills, their strength, dexterity, intelligence, and constitution. In classic 80’s kids Dungeons & Dragons style, they have unlimited encumbrance, meaning they can carry anything they can pick up, file it away in “inventory,” and pull it up whenever needed. They‘re on level 1 of this season’s crawl, a classic dungeon with tunnels, doors, chambers, and monsters—lots of different monsters. There’s a countdown running, so they only have so many days to find a set of stairs that will lead them down to the next, harder level. And if they don’t find the stairs before the timer runs out, the level they’re on will collapse. There’s all sorts of lethal dangers awaiting the crawlers. And that’s what takes up the bulk of the book.There are daring encounters, puzzles to sort through, and lots and lots of monsters to fight. In each encounter, the reader is given real time stats of the characters. After their initial shock, Carl and Donut slowly form an endearing partnership, one that proves quite successful in this dangerous game they‘re forced to play.I’ll confess for the first quarter of the book, I was skeptical. It felt an awful lot like one of my kids watching someone else playing a video game (which is something I don’t really understand). But Matt Dinniman does a masterful job of weaving in enough subplots—both inside and outside the dungeon—so that both a cohesive story and genuine character development emerge from all the excitement of fighting kobolds, or rigging goblin explosives, or figuring out how to slay a “big boss” monster that vaguely resembles a cat-hoarding old lady. There’s depth to this dungeon.And of course there’s action. It’s compelling, page-turning, fun. And funny. Dinniman has a sharp, occasionally crass, often dark sense of humor and he knows how to use it in all the right places. There’s snark, and absurdity, and physical comedy, and some snort-through-your nostrils lines. Think of a homebrew Dungeons and Dragons campaign melded with a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy vibe that‘s centered around a likable hero and a hilariously self-absorbed cat.I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and will definitely be pursuing the series. Highly recommended.

Any gamer will enjoy this book! It’s very creative and entertaining. The plot is not predictable there’s humor, and there’s great fighting scenarios. Looking forward to reading book too!