A review by trinityb2021
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

4.5

4.5 ⭐️ 

I refuse to believe this book is any more than 100 pages. Wait what’s that? Its 450? No that can’t be. I’ve only been reading for an hour. What’s that? It’s been 4 hours? 

No but seriously I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun, been more immersed, or lost track of time as much as I did while reading this book. 

This was a little sweet treat cooked up just for me. Nothing is so perfectly nerdy and dorky. Matt Dinniman is an incredibly brilliant author. 

When I hit the last page I was so surprised that it was over already. I need a hundred more books exactly like this. And luckily, there are. I mean not a hundred but a lot. 

This book isn’t even reading istg. I just watched a video about a new game that was just released, right? RIGHT? OH WAIT IT’S A BOOK? I don’t believe you. 

This was almost perfect. I wanted just a tiny bit more character backstory. There were hints at it. They fed me tiny little scraps. But I was hungry for more. Something to make Carl just a little bit more of a character. He is our narrator yet we know next to nothing about him. It’s a small gripe; we know the big stuff and he’s obviously busy not dying. One scene in a safe room of him thinking through some of his regrets from life would’ve been enough imo. 

This was exceptionally well written. When I remembered that I was in fact not Carl and was a person reading a book, I was so captivated by the craftsmanship of this book. This is not an easy book to write. It is an easy book to READ but it had to have been incredibly hard to write. Getting the comedy right, the tone right, the balance between game mechanics and story beats. It would’ve been so easy to lean too much in one direction and all of a sudden you have a cringey, annoying, unoriginal, D&D book that is horrible. Matt balanced it perfectly and created something unlike anything I’ve ever read before.