I Very Much Recommend Dungeon Crawler Carl

I am about twenty percent into book seven of the Dungeon Crawler Carl books and it has been a blast. In particular the Audiobook versions read by Jeff Hayes. It’s funny, full of interesting twists and turns and often quite heartwarming. All while remaining very light hearted. If you like fantasy, listen to DND podcasts, or play a bunch of video games you’ll probably enjoy it too.

The mostly-non-spoiler summary of the series is that some aliens have taken over and turned the earth into a giant intergalactic game show run by a somewhat deranged AI. Surviving humans enter a dungeon, get fantasy RPG like skills and try and survive as many floors as they can. Carl, and his cat Doughnut enter the dungeon together and battle through enemies, quests and try and slowly unravel what’s going on outside the dungeon they’re now stuck in.

With the exception of a couple of the book, each cover roughly one floor of the dungeon. Each floor has it’s own theme and quirks and the duo meet up with a growing cast of friends and allies as they progress. Everyone they meet along the way is dealing with their own issues, some from before the apocalypse, some dealing with its effects. Each additional character brings their own story as they intertwine with Carl and Doughnut across the various dungeon floors.

As the books progress, more is revealed about the world outside the dungeon. The various intergalactic races, their politics and the long history of The Crawl. The world opens up and deepens the story, raising the stakes on Carl and Doughnut’s journey through the dungeon.

The book describes itself as a literary RPG. Broadly that means it plays out like a narrated video game. The book talks about skills, stats and spells. People level up and find gear. It’s all blended nicely into the narrative of the story. Most of it only exists within the gameshow being played out by the characters.

If you’re not into this sort of thing, I’d give it a chance anyway. It’s not really that pervasive and things like the constant earned achievements are fairly comedic. Warning though that some of them are a little strange. The gameplay mechanics boil down to being similar to any fantasy book and its magic system. There’s not a whole lot of deep research into how it all works, characters just work out the rules and use it to make the story more interesting.

As I mentioned I’ve been making my way through the audiobook version of the series. Jeff Hayes does an amazing job narrating the series. He voices all of the characters other than the very rare guest star. Each of the characters feels unique and interesting. The additional work around sound design takes the whole thing to the next level.

For the first few books I mostly listened to them back to back. Later books I’ve been rationing a bit as I caught up to the latest published entry in the series. I’ve been worried about reaching the end and not having any more to listen to until the next book is released.

Without going into details that would spoil the story I’m not sure how much else I can add here. The series is great, you should give it a try. It’s light, easy listening that manages to be fun and captivating at the same time. It’s not ever going to land in the book store’s literary fiction section and its not trying to. It knows when to be serious and when to poke fun at books taking themselves too seriously.