I didn’t know a whole lot about Dungeon Crawler Carl before picking it up. I had heard of it, of course, but only to the extent that it was a LitRPG and a well written one at that. Other than that, I was going in blind. I came across The Gate of the Feral Gods, the fourth book in the series on the :”New” shelf at the library. I thought the cover looked interesting and, after reading the jaket, I wanted to know what was going on with this guy and his cat.

So I patiently waited for the first book to come in and then promptly devoured it (The story, not the book, that’s frowned upon).

Dungeon Crawler Carl

This book was so fun! I didn’t know what to expect going in to it. When I hear LitRPG, I think guy trapped in a video game and not, forced to fight in a dungeon, on an intergalactic, reality TV show. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be reading scifi when I started this but I’m here for it.

I love a story where I’m learning about the world along with the characters. I think I can thank a childhood spent reading Harry Potter for that. That’s exactly what the first book in the series is and it does it very well. Carl’s thrown into this world with very little information about what’s going on, with only the clothes (or lack there of) on his back and his ex-girlfriends cat a Princess Donut. Lucky for him, the world functions like a video game, including a tutorial. Isn’t that nice!

This whole first book is Carl and Donut exploring the first two floors of the dungeon. I really got a sense of progresssion and understanding as they learned more about the dungeon, the game, and how it all functions.

After years of reading video game blogs, I felt right at home with this book. Often times, when I read about games, I get this image in my head of what a game should be, from reading people’s experiences, but when I go to play it, the game never quite lives up to the game in my head. The benefit of this setting is that the game doesn’t exist but the rules of the game do. Reading it is almost like a game itself. I found myself keeping track of Carl and Donut’s stats and items and then trying to figure out, given that information, how they could possibly get out of whatever situation they were in.

This was such an easy, and enjoyable read. I am not a fast reader and I got through this 450 page book in less than a week. I finished it so fast, I had to wait another week for the second book to come in!

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

The second book took me a little while to get in to. It takes place on the third floor of the dungeon and picks up right where the first one left off. Carl and Donut now have a firm grasp on how the game works and what to do next, which wasn’t as exciting for me. It takes place in the Over City, which is just an endless city, with some interesting lore to it, but the majority of the book takes place in one settlement.

This floor introduces quests for Carl and Donut to do – well – ok, are forced to do. It’s less, let’s explore a dungeon and see what’s around the next corner, and more like let’s hang out in a town and solve a mystery. It’s not that’s abad thing, I just found the prep work they needed to do beforehand more interesting than when they were doing the quest.

There is a portion where Carl is on his own and it made me realize how much I enjoy Carl and Donut’s dynamic and banter. Donut is the definatley what I imagine my cat’s personality if she could talk. She always knows best, and is kind of bossing Carl around. Carl, on the other hand, is protective of Donut and really cares for her, even though she drives him crazy and get’s him into some wild situations.

There’s some flash backs to Carls previous life that are suprsinhly touching for the over the top tone of this book. For a book mainly focused on killing monster and leveling up, I wasn’t quite prepared for Carl’s character to have some emotional depth.

Even though I wasn’t hooked from the get go, I still blazed through this one. This time, I had the foresight to put the third book on hold as soon as I checked this one out so I wouldn’t have to wait as long. I can’t wait to see where this story goes next!