Dungeon Crawler Carl
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman is a good, lighthearted, fun read. Not trying to be literary award material. But the characters are really well written and have actual depth.
I’ve read all 8 books that are out so far. This is a review of the whole series, not book by book, and I’ll keep it to little or no spoilers.
A friend of mine got me into it. They suggested I give it a try, so I did.
What’s it about?
Carl is a former Coast Guard guy who is out in the freezing cold in his boxers, chasing his ex-girlfriend’s cat. Her name is Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk. She’s a tortoiseshell Persian show cat with a whole room full of Best-in-Show ribbons, and she’s worth more than Carl makes in a year. His ex is in the Bahamas. Carl is stuck with the cat.
Then every building on Earth collapses. The aliens running it all turn the planet into a giant dungeon, and the whole thing is a game show broadcast across the galaxy. Carl and Donut go down into it as crawlers.
The dungeon works like a video game. Levels, stats, classes, loot boxes, bosses, achievements, and a new floor with new rules every book. If you’ve played Diablo or pretty much any RPG you’ll recognize a lot of it.
That’s the setup. It gets a lot bigger from there.
The characters
The characters are absolutely the shining element of this series. Everything else is good, but the characters are what kept me reading.
Dinner in the personal space. Carl, Donut, Mordecai (and his plate of bugs) and Katia.
Quick note on the images in this post: they were created using AI based on descriptions from the books, so they’re my “head canon” for what everyone looks like.
Carl and Donut
How Carl and Donut change over the series is a really interesting dynamic to follow. They start out as a guy and his ex’s very spoiled cat. They don’t stay that way.
Donut especially. She grows a lot, and by the middle of the series (and where it currently ends) she has way more depth than you’d expect from a talking show cat. Watching that happen is one of my favorite parts of the whole series.
Mordecai
Mordecai is one of my favorite characters. He runs the tutorial guild on the first floor and ends up as Carl and Donut’s game guide - the one who teaches them how the dungeon works and how to stay alive in it. Carl compares him to Master Splinter the first time he sees him, which is pretty accurate.
For me he’s closer to my favorite character from Diablo 2 - Deckard Cain. The old guy who has seen it all, knows a lot more than he lets on, and keeps pointing you in the right direction. Stay a while and listen.
The System AI
The AI running the dungeon is a character too. At the start it’s mostly the voice handing out achievements and loot boxes, and the achievement messages are honestly some of the funniest parts of the books.
Then it goes through a roller coaster of a character arc. I won’t say more than that. Just pay attention to it.
Prepotente out in front, with Miriam Dom and Bianca behind him.
Everyone else
There are just so many characters with different personalities and their own storylines. A few of them, with only what you know when you first meet them:
- Katia - another crawler. She shows up looking off in a way Carl can’t quite place, and her class is Monster Truck Driver.
- Prepotente - a walking, talking goat. And a very high ranked crawler.
- Imani - one of a group of night shift workers from an eldercare home. Very quiet, and carrying a lot.
- Agatha - a homeless woman with a shopping cart who’s part of that same group.
- Orren - the Syndicate Liaison. He sounds like a British professor and somehow that makes him scarier.
- Quasar - a small gray alien lawyer in a tan suit, with a rapid-fire New York accent. Loved him.
Orren and Quasar in Orren’s office.
And that’s only some of them. A lot of series with a cast this big lose track of people, or you end up with a bunch of names you can’t keep straight. This one doesn’t. It all ties in really well.
It’s a light read
These are “light” reads. If you’re looking for serious depth and award winning writing, this isn’t the series for you.
I’m not saying that as a knock on it. It knows what it is.
I actually started reading these as a sort of palette cleanser between other books. A hard sci-fi novel, then a DCC book. A deep fantasy novel, then a DCC book. A Warhammer 40k novel, then a DCC book. And so on.
By book 3 I wasn’t doing that anymore. I was binge reading them back to back.
Book 3 and the Iron Tangle
I don’t really have a favorite book. Books 1 and 2 are both very strong.
Book 3 (The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook) wasn’t bad, but I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as the others. Part of that is the floor itself. The Iron Tangle is basically every subway and train line in the world mashed together and tied into a knot. I had a really hard time visualizing it, and when I can’t picture where everyone is, it’s harder for me to get into what’s happening.
It didn’t slow me down though. Like I said, by then I was already binging them.
On the audiobooks
A lot of people swear by the audiobooks. I read the books instead. I tried the first audiobook, didn’t like the narrator, and bailed on it pretty quickly.
Plenty of people love it, so try it for yourself. It just wasn’t for me.
A good, lighthearted, fun read.
If you want something fun between heavier books, with a huge cast of characters that all tie together, read this one. Just don't be surprised when you stop reading other books in between.
Matt Dinniman
2020
