Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman
Novelized gaming
Many of the novels I read are what I think of as demanding. Examples are Guy Gavriel Kay's Sarantine universe novels, or Martha Wells's Rising World, or Kiersten White's Conqueror's Saga. Despite all of these being fantasy, and therefore, in the minds of some serious readers, light literature, I find them emotionally and intellectually demanding. Between two such novels, I like to relax with a light palette cleanser. My favorites have generally been light young adult mysteries, such as Nancy Springer's Enola Holmes mysteries or Elizabeth C. Bunce's Myrtle Hardcastle. Having run short of such material, I essayed Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl. It is the first book of a series of eight. I think this will satisfy my needs for a while.
When the novel begins Carl is a single guy, an unemployed former Coast Guard, living alone with Princess Donut. Princess Donut is his ex's prize-winning Persian cat. One night Princess Donut leaps out of Carl's window into a tree. Princess Donut, not being the kind of cat who spends much of her time climbing around in uncouth trees, finds herself stuck. Carl goes out into the freezing night to retrieve her.
This saves his life. Within minutes aliens make an announcement to the entire Earth, then flatten every structure. Anyone under a roof of any type gets vanished. Soon Carl finds a staircase leading down into the Earth and goes down it, since he's freezing his ass off in the winter night, and it's warm down there. He is accompanied by Princess Donut.
Carl and Donut find themselves in a "dungeon" of the type familiar to gamers. ("Dungeon" in this context really means something more like "underground cave warren".) They are beset by various "mobs", which is, I gather, gamer jargon for inexplicably hostile monsterish things. Carl and Donut fight and kill the mobs, gather loot, and try to survive.
And that's pretty much the book. It's more fun than my description makes it sound. Carl is clever and finds ways to fight the monsters. Princess Donut becomes a full-fledged dungeon crawler, capable of speech and fighting. She and Carl form a team, and she is the notional leader because of her high stats.
This first installment is mostly world-building. We learn the rules of the dungeon. There are also hints of interesting political backstory, which are sure to be expanded on in future novels.
The novel, and presumably the entire series, has a serious "plot armor" problem. Although Carl and Donut frequently battle very dangerous monsters, we never believe they're in real danger of being ended. (The choice of verb is deliberate -- although neither Carl nor Donut dies in this first novel, I expect that eventually to happen. Readers of Fantasy and Science Fiction known that death is often no more than a temporary inconvenience.) This is a series of eight books, and we need Carl and Donut for it to continue.
It's low-stakes fun. I will continue reading.
Thanks for this. Heard so many rave reviews but not sure if I like the concept. Is this LitRPG?