To call this derivative is an understatement. But that's what this genre demands; rehash all your favourite media properties into something new. It's the literary equivalent of having your Transformers™ fight your He-Man© toys.
The plot, such as it is, features the Vogon Constructor Fleet destroying Earth due to a late beurecratic appeal, forcing people to play The Hunger Games, while a Twitch streamer narrates the action.
The protagonists in Andy Weir's books are boys who know enough science to save the day. The ones in Scalzi's books have enough pop-culture knowledge to save the day. Dinniman's has played enough loot-box gatcha RPGs to save the day.
It is mostly pretty good fun. The tropes are goofy, the gore is splattertastic and only rarely ventures into torture porn, the villains are suitably campy, and the wisecracking sidekick doesn't become too annoying.
But the prose…
Here's a classic scene from Red Dwarf which exemplifies the major problem I had with this book.
There's only so many times you can read "Then I severed a +3 damage with poison debuff while he raised a +1 shield and used his armour of holding to neutralise the attack". I find opening endless lootboxen a chore when I'm playing a game - reading 150 instances of "I got a bronze box with a cauldron of Mafeking, then a gold box with an enchanted ring, then…" just becomes tiresome.
I tried listening to the audiobook of the sequel and I just couldn't get past the endless recitation of lists about +5 to elbows and -6 to arseholes. Just unbearably tedious.
Look, I've never written a novel and doubt I could do any better. This has obviously found its fanbase but, regrettably, I'm not one. It was a fun enough read, but I'm not sure I can be bothered with a dozen more sequels of recycled plots and repetitive squishing of cackling enemies.
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ISBN: 9798232923594
9 thoughts on “Book Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman”
@Edent I've read some of the webtoon adaptation, and even there, where they can skip over the +5 poison damage bits because they can just show you the fight, it very quickly started to feel like the reward for the repetitive fight scenes was even more repetitive lootbox scenes.
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@Edent I am reading the novel now and I feel the review is a fair assessment. This book feels akin to watching someone else play a video game through text rather than a classic fantasy narrative.
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@Edent It's the literary equivalent of having your Transformers™ fight your He-Man© toys. What an amazing quote
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I also read the first book and didn't finish the series. I found the most interesting parts were the points where the "main" plot paused and we got a bit of the bigger geopolitical (inter-galacticpolitical?) world building and drama. There just wasn't enough of that to offset the battles, IMO
Shrike
Good news! The geopolitical stuff becomes more and more important as the series progresses, it's pretty much the main thing later on - Carl is still in the dungeon, but we get more and more about the outside world.
Nice review. Don't feel you are missing anything by not continuing with the series, the next 3 books at least are more of the same.
I wrote a blog post on my feelings about DCC. I have a higher tolerance for weird gamer-related statistics than you do but found I had to tap out of the series for a different reason - the unrelenting nihilism and sheer inhumanity of the video game logic plot just really made me uncomfortable.
The more of your book reviews I read, the happier I am with the one you did for my book 🙂 (I was extremely happy to begin with, just to be clear!)
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Steven Bollenbaugh
I was given this book as a gift, which is why I ended up reading a lot of it — I kept hoping it would get better. I think the review is accurate, but the final rating is a bit generous. The premise is interesting, and there are some interesting ideas here and there, but overall I found it to be a tedious, repetitive slog. It could have used a good editor and some good writing classes for the author to avoid a lot of that and provide a much more robust story. I have since gotten rid of book 1 and book 2, the latter remaining unread.
@Edent This is the first time ive had a very differing opinion than yours. Strange feeling! Its one of my favorite series. But thats ok people are entitled to their opinions. Glad you gave it a shot though!
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