Blurb:

The apocalypse will be televised!

A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.

In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.

The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.

Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.

You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.

You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.

They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.

Review:

Dungeon Crawler Carl was my first foray into the litRPG genre, and it’s safe to say I’m hooked. 

As a low-to-medium-skilled gamer, I went into this book expecting a silly, lighthearted joyride with nods to video game tropes, written against an apocalyptic backdrop. And yes, all of that was delivered – but the story itself was so much cleverer, more emotional and nuanced than I could have hoped for. 

Our eponymous hero, Carl, begins his adventure as a jaded, sarcastic, six-foot-three, ex-military everyman who would be any copy-pasted shooter’s main-character-slash-wet-dream. But Carl is so much more than the sum of his parts, especially when paired with his dungeon crawling counterpart; the gorgeous and sassy Persian longhair cat, Princess Donut. I wouldn’t claim that Carl ever embraces his role as a video game hero (unlike Princess Donut and her magic missile spell) but he continuously works outside the box to overcome obstacles, mobs, and dungeon bosses in glorious (and uncomfortably sexual) style. Carl has quickly become one of my favourite characters to read. Matt Dinniman has expertly crafted multifaceted characters that undergo some of the most ridiculously funny, as well as deeply conflicting, terrifying, and heartbreaking moments that I’ve read this year.

This book isn’t simply a shock-and-awe slasher, or another subpar video game novelization, or even a pandering attempt to engage with twenty-something dudes – or anything else someone might (falsely) say about the litRPG genre – it offers genuine laughs as well as adept examinations of the human condition, consumerism and corporate greed, and the price of fame. Oh, and a lot of feet stuff. There’s a lot of feet stuff.

While obviously derived from the video gaming experience – complete with NPCs, level-ups, loot boxes, and more – I would place this book in the same realm as works like Cabin in the Woods, Loki, and Gravity Falls. The sarcastic rewards system and system AI is very reminiscent of (a much more adult) GLaDOS or the Five Nights at Freddy’s 5 tutorial guide. 

At its core, Dungeon Crawler Carl is a twisted, depraved, and hilarious love letter to classic video games, table-top RPGs, and cosmic horror. I adored the first entry in this web-serial-turned-novel, and am hoping book two pops up in my inventory ASAP.