Dungeon Crawler Carl
Dungeon Crawler Carl #1
By: Matt Dinniman
Narrator: Jeff Hays
Publisher: Dandy House Publishing & Sound Booth Theater (audiobook)
Genre: SciFi
Rating:
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can’t just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that “it” factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That’s the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it’s anything but a game.
My thoughts…
What a story! I’m not usually a scifi reader. I generally like there to be some sort of romance to the story. However, this one was so entertaining that I didn’t need romance to enjoy this. As someone who watches anime and has seen many shows where the main character gets put in a game world and must survive, I had no problem imagining the world dungeon concept of the book.
I listened to the audiobook and I feel like a huge reason why this book worked for me was the narrator. He did such a phenomenal job with all the different characters. His range was insane and any time a character spoke, I didn’t hear him making their voice, I just heard the character. I honestly do not know if I would have enjoyed the book as much as I did if it wasn’t for Jeff’s voice acting. He truly brought the story to life.
I truly enjoyed this story. It is hard not to root for Carl and his cat, Princess Donut. This poor dude can’t seem to catch a break in the story, and it makes for some hilarious times. I mean, just look at the cover, this dude is fighting for his life in his boxers. No shoes, no pants, just running around in underwear and a jacket the entire time.
The series has one more book to go before everything wraps up for Carl and Princess Donut. I am not sure if I will wait until the 9th book comes out to continue the audio-series, or if I will just cath up on the series now and then wait with the masses for the finale to drop. If I’m being honest, it’s probably going to be the latter because I want to be part of the masses reading that final book at the same time.
