The premise of Dungeon Crawler Carl is that aliens are repossessing the Earth to harvest its materials and putting humans through an existence-level threat promise that starts by leveling all buildings (and shelters of any sort) to the ground, only leaving alive any living thing that happened to be outside at the time. Then, entrances appear to lead down into an underground dungeon designed to kill the remaining living souls in ways that are entertaining to alien audiences... and to inspire likes, comments, and follows. (Think Running Man meets Hunger Games meets Dungeons & Dragons meets Player One... during sweeps week.) Oh, joy.
Our hero, Carl, was cat-sitting his girlfriend's cat, Princess Donut, when "the event" occurred and would have died if he hadn't had to chase that cat out into the winter snow after it got out. Barefoot. And in his underwear. Which, now that he's in some alien-crafted murder-dungeon, seems to be a fairly permanent condition. On the upside, Princess Donut is there with him, so he won't die alone. However, throw in some attribute-improving loot and Donut ends up more intelligent and WAAAY more charismatic that Carl. So, she's the party leader. Yeah. Carl's not having a good day.
So, the fact that the book starts out with near extermination of life on Earth and then moves into a fight-to-the-death designed to be entertainment should have come across as very, very dark from square one, but I found the story entertaining and somehow the impact of it didn't really hit me at first. However, as more was revealed about what was going on, why management decisions were being made in the ways they were, and some of the things that were being done as part of this show, thing got quite dark at times. It hit me when it became apparent that some of the people who appeared to die in the first event may, in fact, have suffered fates much worse than death...
Dungeon Crawler Carl has familiar dungeon creatures and tropes, and the Syndicate puts on an "Earth Themed" murder-travaganza for their viewers. It's interesting to see a mashup of RPG games, heads-up displays / augmented reality, sufficiently advanced technology magic to alter the world and living things in it, reality television and social media-style ratings... all wrapped up in an alien apocalypse. It's a bit much, but somehow Dinniman makes it work.
I really enjoyed Dungeon Crawler Carl and am excitedly looking forward to the next book in the series. Usually when I say that, "looking forward" also means "really hoping it actually gets written," Here, however, the entire six-book Dungeon Crawler Carl series has already been written. (This is a new edition with a new cover and exclusive bonus material.) And what, pray tell, is the bonus material? I discussed the bonus material with J.R. Nip and he described it as being like a "post-credit scene." I thought that was a very apt description. The story had ended before that chapter (in a very, "What?! Don't end it HERE!" sort of way), but then the final (bonus) chapter let the reader in on a little loosely hanging thread of the story that they might not even have been pondering about... but that little chapter revealed a bit about the game and filled in some things that had gone on outside of the reader's view. I would have to say it posed more questions that it answered, but, somehow, it made the ending feel a little bit better.
Mind you, I am very excited about continuing the series without that fear in the back of my mind that the story might just end part-way through and I'm still champing at the bit to continue the story. I highly recommend delving in, if you haven't read it yet. If you have, perhaps you buy this new edition (with bonus material) for yourself and pass along your old edition to get your friend addicted interested in the series.
