Review by wardenred - Dungeon Crawler Carl - Season 1 [Audio Immersion Tunnel]

wardenred 's review for:

Dungeon Crawler Carl - Season 1 [Audio Immersion Tunnel] by Matt Dinniman

5.0

adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Did we really just start a meth war between the goblins and the llamas?

I’ve got a complicated relationship with the LitRPG genre. On one hand, it always sounds like something made for me, since I love gaming and the idea of turning game mechanics into part of the narrative appeals to me greatly. On the other hand, most of what I’ve read in the genre, with only a couple of exceptions, left me bored and disappointed, so after some point, I kind of stopped trying to get acquainted with it. Except a bunch of my friends have been super excited about the Dungeon Crawler Carl for a while, so eventually, I fell to peer pressure. And boy, I’m so glad I did, because this has been A Romp!

One thing I had doubts about starting out was the combination of the really dark premise (the whole world ends and the survivors get stuck in an intergalactic dungeon crawl-themed reality show, dying by the million) and the humor everyone promised me. I wasn’t sure how possible it was to combining the two aspects without trivializing stuff I don’t like seeing trivialized. Unbelievably, it turns out it’s quite possible! There’s much hilarity here, but the horror of everyone’s circumstances is always there in the background. The humor happens in spite of that, in that pretty organic way where things get so absurdly bad that you can’t help but laugh every time an occasion arises. And the dungeon does provide plenty of occasion, between all the over-the-top notifications, ridiculous takes on the D&D-ish tropes, and the AI having a foot fetish. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I feel like in a story with a less dark premise, I would find a lot of the jokes obnoxious, but here, somehow, it just works.

I also genuinely enjoyed how the blend of videogame and reality show was handled. It’s a game, so of course there are rules that the players must follow and can exploit if they’re smart and inventive enough. But it’s also a show, so of course those rules get constantly tweaked and rigged to provide more entertainment to the viewers—and a steadier current of money for the organizers. And then of course there are all those tensions and intrigues and dirty deals between all the intergalactic capitalists involved, and the crawlers have no way to be fully aware of it all but still need to take whatever scraps of information they get into account if they want to survive long enough. It’s sort of like Hunger Games, if the tributes were forced to deal with sponsors directly while managing their risks of dying horribly. Except with levels and loot and skill points.

Carl is a fun protagonist who’s doing his best to keep it together while maintaining a moral compass, and Donut is an endless source of entertainment in a way only cats can be. Other characters all provide their own layers to the narrative, whether they’re fellow crawlers or the various cogs in the whole dungeon show machine. The action is always tense and inventive and entertaining. Finally, the audio production is superb, more of an audiodrama podcast than an audiobook, and I’m very glad I opted for this way of getting acquainted with the story. Honestly, I’ve had so much fun with this book. I will definitely continue the series.

Content Warnings