Can subtlety punch you in the face?
Yes. Yes it can.
If you don’t believe me, pick up a copy of Dungeon Crawler Carl and get to reading. You will be blasted with gratuitous violence, obscenely offensive caricatures and darkly crass humour, all in service of a deeply relatable bigger-picture narrative about what it feels like to be one small person struggling to retain a sense of humanity in the face of vastly powerful corporate entities.
A little to real? Yeah.
And it was published in 2020, before AI was really even a thing.
The Story
At the exact moment aliens take over Earth, Carl is standing outside his apartment building in his boxers attempting to rescue his ex-girlfriend’s prissy show cat Princess Donut from a tree. The next moment, Earth has been flattened and Carl and Donut are tossed into an alien reality show televised across the galaxy.
Together with the rest of Earth’s survivors, Carl and Princess must level up, gather items, and defeat video-game-like bad guys to survive.
But in this messed up RPG, even the NPC’s are real people enslaved to the corporations behind the game, and every bad guy defeated means a real life Carl and Princess must extinguish to preserve their own.
What I Liked
Dungeon Crawler Carl is first and foremost an action novel and a LitRPG, but underneath the ass-kicking and levelling up, the story boasts a surprising amount of layered nuance.
First, there’s the alien politics.
The video game Carl is trapped in is brutal and grotesque, and it’s a product of the alien culture that created it. Carl begins to pick up clues about what’s really going on in the galactic political landscape outside of the show as he pieces together clues from the game. As readers learn more about what’s happening on the galactic political scene, that knowledge reframes our view of Carl’s predicament. Carl becomes not just a dude trapped in a video game, but a man struggling to keep his humanity intact while surviving the whims of dehumanizing corporate entities.
In conversation with the bigger picture human-versus-corporation conflict, there’s a whole extra layer of darkly humorous social critique on a system that requires social media manipulation skills to survive.
As Carl progresses through the game, he discovers that simply playing the game well isn’t enough. If he really wants to stay alive, he and Princess must gain social media followers, line up interviews, and score corporate sponsors who can pull the right strings on their behalf.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Carl’s predicament parallels the situation many aspiring writers encounter when they discover that publishing success is only a little bit about writing a good book and a lot about follower count, connections, and algorithmic manipulation skills.
What I Loved
The character dynamics are top notch. Blue-collar Carl and prissy Princess Donut make the best foils for each other as Donut’s thirst for the limelight continually puts the pair at odds even as they attempt to work as a team. Carl’s constant refrain of “Goddamnit Donut!” sums up their relationship perfectly.
If you’ve ever owned a cat, you will relate.
A Note on the Content
I’m not exaggerating when I say this novel will punch you in the face.
The meaning behind the book is pure, but the means the author uses to convey said meaning are pretty twisted. You will not go a single paragraph without being blasted by dark humour, intentionally offensive caricatures and over-the-top violence. If don’t want to see a nursery full of baby goblins murdered, or if you’re going to get your panties twisted when the main character is forced to battle an overweight Latina hoarder as a bloated, grotesque video game boss, you’re not going to like this book.
On the other hand, if those elements don’t offend you at least a little, all you’re going to see here is an action novel, when this book is really so much more.
I actually think this book might be for you even if you’re a sensitive reader. Maybe just equip some quality gauntlets and a nice thick Enchanted Trollskin Shirt of Pummeling first.
Overall Thoughts
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman is more than just an action novel with an attention grabbing concept and enticing cover art. It has a deeper meaning conveyed with equal parts nuance and excess. If you want to be pummelled in the face with over-the-top means while the ends reach around to give you a nice subtle little brain tickle, Dungeon Crawler Carl is your book.
Highly recommend and will be reading the rest of the series pronto.
