Dungeon Crawler Carl (2020), Matt Dinniman
Oh my gosh, this is one of those books where I honestly wasn’t sure what to make of it at first! It was recommended to me by a friend.
The whole thing is so over-the-top and bizarre that it took me a while to settle into it. I remember thinking early on, okay… is this going to be too much for me?
Then somewhere along the way, I stopped questioning it and just went with it.
And I ended up laughing out loud more than I expected. Carl works because he reacts the way you’d expect a normal person to react when everything around him is completely insane. And Donut… I don’t even know how to explain it without spoiling anything, but that dynamic really carries a lot of the book. It shouldn’t work as well as it does, but it really does.
What I kept noticing was how much imagination is packed into this thing. Every new situation feels like the author pushed it just a little further than you’d expect. New rules, new problems, new weird details. It never really settles, which kept me reading longer than I planned. I kept telling myself I’d stop after a chapter, and then something odd or funny would happen and I’d keep going.
At some point, I was asking myself: Was the author parodying Hunger Games? And the Ball of Swine boss level read like something out of Angry Birds.
It did take me a bit to get into, though. The beginning is loud, fast, and kind of overwhelming. There were a couple moments where I felt like I was just trying to keep up instead of actually enjoying it. Even later on, it can feel like a lot all at once. So yeah, it’s not something I’d recommend if you’re in the mood for a calm or slower read.
But once it clicked, it was just fun. Weird, chaotic, sometimes ridiculous, but fun. And I’ve got to give credit for how creative it is.
I’ll never look at cats or llamas (won't give away the Ilama part. You've got to read it to believe it) the same way again!