Dungeon Crawler Carl

This book is one of the rare instances where I received a recommendation from a work colleague and actually read it. Not because there’s anything wrong with my coworkers’ taste, but because I have a massive backlog and terrible follow-through. But the premise of this one caught me.

It’s about a man at the end of the world who gets thrown into a real-life dungeon crawler game. Plus he has a cat that talks.

Right up my alley, really. Still, I’ll admit to some hesitation going in. While I recognize Ready Player One’s pop cultural significance, it is remarkably unenjoyable as a story. I was worried that Dungeon Crawler Carl would follow in RPO’s footsteps of lionizing nerd culture while prioritizing references over world building.

Those worries turned out to be completely unfounded.

Carl represents a pretty standard Gym Dude. He likes video games, working out, and his ex-girlfriend’s prized show cat Princess Donut. He is not thrilled to be participating in an apocalyptic corporate alien death game; no matter how many creatures he pummels to death with his bare hands / feet, he rarely considers the situation anything but horrifying. Black comedy aside, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a dark story, and its reluctance to shy away from the brutality is what makes it more than a power fantasy isekai. As you get more glimpses of the alien corporations behind the plot, the book’s themes start to feel more in common with something like Squid Game than Ready Player One.

This isn’t the most character-driven story. While the crawler cast does a good job of being interesting without relying too heavily on quirkiness (Donut barely manages to toe that line at moments), the first book really only hints at possible arcs or future character development. The relationship between Carl and Donut oscillates between contentious and heartfelt in a pretty compelling way, while reserving plenty for them to work through in future installments.

As an RPG player, I found the Dungeon Crawler game elements entertaining. There’s a non-trivial amount of math exposition (we killed x things, we gained a level, my stats went up) that I could see getting tedious, but I personally didn’t find Carl’s fixation on the numbers to be immersion breaking, given their vital importance to his survival. I’m curious to see whether the mechanics get more or less spotlight as the series progresses, and in what way. Much beyond Book 1’s floors is (intentionally) shrouded in mystery, so I don’t mind getting a thorough grounding in how the game works while waiting for the surprises that lay below.

Are there still pop culture references? Yes. Do things get silly? Absolutely. But Dungeon Crawlwer Carl manages to balance a line between ridiculous and heartbreaking that makes for thoroughly captivating storytelling. I’ve already put in a library hold for the next installment, accepting that this serieis has pretty well derailed my reading plans for the rest of the year.