Dungeon Crawler Carl

I have a guilty pleasure. I have been reading the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by Matt Dinniman, and I am hooked. I read the first book a while back, and now I am up to book five.

Okay, the premise may sound a little wild, but here goes. One night (or day, as this event happens all over the Earth at the same time, no matter what time of day or night) all roofs collapse. Any person who is under a roof of any kind gets smashed flatter than a pancake. Instantly. Anyone who is in a car, or a house, or a building, is dead. This leaves only a fraction of the human race left alive. Why has this happened? Aliens did it. Why did they do it? For entertainment.

Carl, it seems, had gone outside in the middle of the night to rescue his ex-girlfriend’s cat (named Princess Donut). So now Carl and the cat found themselves in a subterranean labyrinth forced to participate in a game for the amusement of aliens. This game comes with nonplayer characters like orcs and goblins and dragons, but the nonplayer characters can kill you. Dead. So, you have to kill them first. Oh, and also the other humans might kill you too. Think of it like The Hunger Games, if The Hunger Games was funny. It is funny. For one thing the cat, Donut, has been gifted with the ability to speak. Donut the cat is a hoot. At times Donut is childlike and naïve, but at other times you realize that she is wise beyond her years. Nobody can put Carl in his place like Donut.

The other funny thing is the AI. Various groups of aliens are in charge of the game but the actual running of the game is done by the AI. At times the AI explains to Carl and the other "crawlers” (that’s what they call people trapped in the game: "crawlers") what is going on. It also describes newly introduced creatures to Carl and the many, many ways they can kill you, in gruesome hilarious detail. The AI also describes the effects of magical devices, spells, and potions, as well as the side effects which can kill you in many, many gruesome and hilarious ways.

If a crawler is careful and everything goes well, they can advance down the stairs to the next floor which will be even more ridiculously deadlier than the one they just escaped from, so they had better learn skills and gain useful items before they move to the next level, but, oh yeah, there is a time limit. They must go down to the next floor before the time runs out or the level they are on will collapse and they will be dead.

This series is violent. People and non-people meet very violent ends, and that might turn some readers off. But it is such an outlandish fantasy that the violence never bothered me. (I am whipping through these books way too fast.)

Feast or Famine (anthology)

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