Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Having just posted about a book that was a love story with romance and poetry… this is not that.

I was skeptical about this book. Anything with ‘buzz’ just sounds like a lot of disappointment waiting to happen. Pop culture often feels like a thing I want to avoid more than something I should know.

I have finished this one off at a very rapid pace – and have purchased the second in the series. That will stand as its own recommendation I think. Moving on to the second in a series is a rare thing for me.

This book could be considered a full story. Did I need to go to the second one? That is a pet peeve of mine – just stopping a story in the middle for the sake of creating a second book. I loathe that publishing tactic. This story teetered on the edge of that, but there was just enough closure to work. The writing style is very easy to read, with short chapters that keep the action moving right along.

The book starts with the set up from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and just moves in a different direction. Some of the humor seems cruel to me, but that, perhaps, is the point. The aliens aren’t trying to be nice, they’re trying to wipe people out while producing a Running Man style show where the characters are abused for the entertainment of the audience. I am not super fond of the main character, nor am I enough of a cat fan to be overly attached to the main duo. What this story does deliver is enough interesting world building to make the action feel important. There are a ton of threads dangling in the story that (if the author is good) will get tied back into the story later.

So… good, but will it carry past the second novel? We shall see.



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