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Dungeon Crawler Carl
May. 10th, 2026 08:44 pmI've been resisting trying Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman for quite some time - even though, or perhaps because, everyone I follow on BookTube has been going on and on for months about how good it was. It really didn't appeal to me, particularly as I don't generally react well to comedy - but I was even more worried that I'd love it and then be stuck having to catch up on seven more books before then having to wait for the next ones to come out...
And I'm just gonna say it - everyone was right. Goddammit, Doughnut!
I wasn't initially keen on the narrator's 'normal' voice - though performance and production values on the audiobook are very high. All the character voices are awesome, the special effects are just enough to give extra layers of enjoyment without being over the top, and I got used to the narrator well before the end.
It had me snort-laughing out loud in the street, which is rare and always welcome. It also had me frowning at certain aspects of the humour and going, 'EWWWW!' quite a bit, but the pure enjoyment of the overall adventure far outweighed the aspects I wasn't so keen on.
And it does have levels - and not just the dungeon levels! It doesn't delve massively into the trauma of most of the human population being killed in the initial creation of the dungeon, but it does touch on it. And Carl does reflect on how distasteful it is to be forced to kill the monsters, as well as lamenting how many of the other crawlers keep dying as things go on. There's also the start of a really beautiful friendship between Carl and Princess Doughnut (the cat), which I can see deepening a lot as the series continues.
There's a lot of clever seeding of what's to come to make you want to read on, both in this book and drawing you into later instalments - plus lots of inventive variety which presumably keeps making it fresh and interesting, even though it's essentially just Carl working his way down the levels.
The grimace-inducing bro humour is in there - but it's almost entirely restricted to the achievement announcements, which are simulating video game text, so it's pretty authentic for this kind of game... It treads a clever line so it will retain people who might be offended by implying it's satirising these types of games, but also provide the humour itself for those who will enjoy it.
By the second half, I was wanting to keep listening to the exclusion of everything else and can see myself powering through the whole series without a break. This is not how I envisaged the next few months of my life going. Goddammit, Doughnut!
And I'm just gonna say it - everyone was right. Goddammit, Doughnut!
I wasn't initially keen on the narrator's 'normal' voice - though performance and production values on the audiobook are very high. All the character voices are awesome, the special effects are just enough to give extra layers of enjoyment without being over the top, and I got used to the narrator well before the end.
It had me snort-laughing out loud in the street, which is rare and always welcome. It also had me frowning at certain aspects of the humour and going, 'EWWWW!' quite a bit, but the pure enjoyment of the overall adventure far outweighed the aspects I wasn't so keen on.
And it does have levels - and not just the dungeon levels! It doesn't delve massively into the trauma of most of the human population being killed in the initial creation of the dungeon, but it does touch on it. And Carl does reflect on how distasteful it is to be forced to kill the monsters, as well as lamenting how many of the other crawlers keep dying as things go on. There's also the start of a really beautiful friendship between Carl and Princess Doughnut (the cat), which I can see deepening a lot as the series continues.
There's a lot of clever seeding of what's to come to make you want to read on, both in this book and drawing you into later instalments - plus lots of inventive variety which presumably keeps making it fresh and interesting, even though it's essentially just Carl working his way down the levels.
The grimace-inducing bro humour is in there - but it's almost entirely restricted to the achievement announcements, which are simulating video game text, so it's pretty authentic for this kind of game... It treads a clever line so it will retain people who might be offended by implying it's satirising these types of games, but also provide the humour itself for those who will enjoy it.
By the second half, I was wanting to keep listening to the exclusion of everything else and can see myself powering through the whole series without a break. This is not how I envisaged the next few months of my life going. Goddammit, Doughnut!
