This week I’ve been reading the LitRPG Dungeon Crawler Carl. If you’re unfamiliar a LitRPG stands for literature role playing game and includes elements of gaming as part of the premise. Dungeon Crawler Carl has, as to my current knowledge, been held up as one of the better LitRPGs and is recommended by both the internet and several of my friends.

I started reading the first book Saturday and am currently close to finishing the 5th book. The book series follows its namesake Carl a human man who recently broke up with his girlfriend and is outside searching for their shared cat Donut when every building suddenly collapses. In the freezing cold wearing only a leather jacket, crocs, and his underwear he is forced to enter a glowing portal. The portal puts him on an interdimensional game show where aliens have created a dungeon full of unfair traps and systems in order to make the humans of Earth dance for their amusement.

The books so far are centered on Carl and his cat Donut who gains sentience as their find ways to stick it back to the man. Or the people who run this gameshow. They meet an interesting cast along the way of other characters who each have strange abilities given to them by the AI running the gameshow. Carl is a deeply caring person and often goes out of his way to save his fellow crawlers putting himself and his cat at great risk.

Speaking of Carl I think as a main character he is quite drab. He used to be in the military and worked as a Marine Technician before starting his crawler journey. He knows how to use lots of explosives and uses his hands and feet to pummel enemies to the ground. I am uninterested in his build and find it to be off putting. I think LitRPGs are often written and targeted towards men and this particular fantasy doesn’t appeal to me in any way.

His saving grace however is that Carl is a schemer. While his build is uninteresting luckily the book does not spend too much going into his stats or abilities like other LitRPGs. Instead the book spends a good amount of time walking through Carl’s plans to screw over the system using different elements of the game and information. This has not gotten old yet and the author has great ways of keeping me engaged and surprised when plans don’t go as planned or wrenches are thrown in.

This has not been the case with book 5 however and I am concerned that the trend will continue. While book 5 still has plenty of good plans the information that was previously included so the reader could piece things together is no longer included. Many scenes show Carl clearly learning something but are cut off before we the audience can learn that as well. As a metalinguistic tool I think this is interesting. We are placed in the role of the audience who only knows some parts of the plan. But as a reading experience I don’t find this as enjoyable as being able to piece together parts of my own plan or find chinks in the armor of the systems rules.

The supporting cast I find to be more interesting than Carl himself. Princess Donut of course is a great comedic relief character with some added heart touching moments thrown in. She’s sassy and quite domineering but truly cares for Carl and is scared of what is to come. I appreciate seeing a different reaction to the intensely traumatic environment the characters are forced into. Carl gets angry and feels the need to take action while Donut tries to cover it up with being above it all.

Other characters like Katia and Elle are some of the highlights of the series so far. Katia especially has a very interesting build and it’s always a pleasure to see her incorporated into plans. Elle is a former 99 year old granny who has become a frost maiden and she makes me think of my granny. She’s wild and a hoot truly only formerly held back by her failing body.

All in all I plan to finish Dungeon Crawler Carl sometime in the next week but I don’t know if it’s something I would recommend. I’m giving it a solid 3 stars out of 5. It’s a great popcorn read and something I’m happy to pass the time with but it lacks any deeper bite to it so far.

And remember to get out there and Read! Read! Read!