Dungeon Crawler Carl 1-5

“New achievement! You’ve killed an armed mob with your bare fucking hands! Holy crap, dude. That’s kinda fucked up. Reward: You’ve received a Bronze Weapon Box!” (Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman).

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Forget, for a moment, that Dungeon Crawler Carl is LitRPG, a sub-genre most non-gamers haven’t heard of and wouldn’t condescend to read. Forget that you can’t find it at a library, libby, or your favorite bookstore because it doesn’t exist in print. Pretend that it’s just a really good, hilarious, long, piece fantasy with a magical system that just happens to mirror video games. That’s how you trick yourself into reading it; and reading it, immediately, should be your ultimate goal in life.

After almost everyone on earth is killed when aliens come to make TV out of the apocalypse, Carl and Donut (his ex-girlfriend’s cat) find themselves trapped in a video-game type dungeon. The books transcend your every-day fantasy because of the constant humor (e.g.: Carl never gets pants, but goes around fighting monsters in heart boxers), the fight the system, anarchist undertones, and Carl’s character – which manages to be both earnest and wild with out-of-the-box, video-game Mcgyver solutions to problems.  The suspense and pacing are fantastic and the dungeon AI’s foot fetish and increasing insanity make this AI rival even Murderbot in my, personal, all-time-favorite AI contest.

This is Hunger Games for adults. The premise is similar (fighting for survival while watched by overlords for entertainment), but this is way more hilarious, gruesome, and it isn’t bogged down by any half-assed love triangles. I made a rule that I could only listen to Dungeon Crawler Carl while exercising, and I have never worked out more consistently in my life (also, the audiobook version is highly recommended).