If you stepped into a book store in the past year, you likely saw a copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Each of the three Barnes & Nobles I went to had tables specifically for the series. When I brought up the fact that it was on my TBR to a friend, they very excitedly told me that they loved the series, offering to loan me the books. Everything I saw told me this was a well beloved series among its fans. I wondered: is Dungeon Crawler Carl really as good as all the signs were saying?
Dungeon Crawler Carl is an ongoing, eight-book series by Matt Dinniman. It is a LitRPG, a style of book that follows the structure of a role-playing game. The reader is not playing this time, however. Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat, Princess Donut, find themselves trapped in an alien-run death game after Earth is mined for its resources. In order to survive, they fight monsters to gain experience and skills, leveling up as characters traditionally do in an RPG
Dungeon Crawler Carl is the first LitRPG I saw published and achieving popularity at this level, which excited me. I read several LitRPGs before; the gamification of progression has been a popular trope in the webnovel space for a long time. In fact, Dungeon Crawler Carl was originally published on Royal Road, a popular platform for this type of novel. But if you have not wasted hours of your life reading LitRPGs online, Dungeon Crawler Carl’s gaming aspects are new in the sphere of traditionally published novels. I believe this may have led to its insane popularity. Many people I talked to about the series say it is nothing like anything they read before.
Being new and fresh most likely is not the only reason the series gained such fame. I had a great time reading the first book, and I have read many a LitRPG before. The RPG aspects are easy to follow for those unused to the genre. The rules of the game are explained to the readers through the characters learning them as well, instead of expecting familiarity as many webnovels do. As someone who was used to the genre, I was pleasantly surprised by how the RPG elements were used. Often, LitRPGs heavily base themselves off of preexisting RPGs like D&D, leading to very similar class types, skills, and systems across novels. But Dungeon Crawler Carl takes a more holistic approach. Every skill you may have ever learned has a level, including both skills in pinball and fistfighting. The class options number in the thousands instead of a few dozen, expanding beyond simple Assassin to things like Roller Derby Jammer. It leads to a more true-to-life leveling system than the one that exists in games. It expanded far past the archetypes of the LitRPG genre that has long grown stale to me, and it leads to a level of complexity in skillsets that I can tell will lead to a fantastic reading experience in future books.
The largest complaint I saw before reading the book was about an excess of low-brow humor, often called millennial male humor in the complaints. This refers to jokes whose humor lies in breaking the boundaries of “political correctness,” often making fun of women or marginalized groups without any wit beyond that. Books that rely on low-brow humor are generally not very funny, and I worried that the comedy of Dungeon Crawler Carl would fall short. I did find the humor to be low-brow, but you might be surprised that I was okay with it. Most often, the System AI running the exploitative death game is the source of those jokes, making fun of monsters’ appearances or treating women as sex objects. These jokes are condemned by the narrative and the main characters, with Carl often being disgusted by them. The world exists in a depth beyond the jokes. Characters that are meant to disgust have their own backstories and goals. The jokes are simply a facade over the true horror of what is happening to the humans of Earth. The book is funny beyond low-brow humor, and I enjoyed it immensely.
For those still worrying that Dungeon Crawler Carl is not serious enough for their tastes, it is a much deeper book than it may seem from its summary. Carl has to reckon with the upcoming extinction of planet Earth, as more and more of the remaining humans die in the dungeon. The syndicate of evil alien overlords has many different players, each with their own agendas. There is a whole other layer hidden behind the set dressing that Carl cannot investigate too overtly for risk of punishment. It may be marketed as a comedy, but there is a dark side to the book that compelled me to read more. I think that, perhaps, that is what makes this series so popular. The fun and interesting parts hide a horribleness. You root for Carl not just to level up but to survive torture, to not lose himself in despair.
Would I say Dungeon Crawler Carl is as good as its popularity makes it out to be? My first time opening the book, I meant to read just a chapter or two to get started on a book I thought would take me a few chapters to become invested in. Before I knew it, I read ten. I was turning page after page without noticing the time passing by. It was excellent. But I don’t know if I would say if it lives up to its popularity. I have yet to see that certain je ne sais quoi that makes you want to tell everyone about what you just read. I still do not know what makes it such a juggernaut. I am, however, only a book and a half into an eight book series, so Dungeon Crawler Carl has plenty of time to wow me.