Book Review
Dungeon Crawler Carl Is Fantasy’s Most Appealing Horror Story
A Cat Named Princess Donut, DnD Logic, and Millennial Humor
“The goal of the dungeon is simple: beat the historically unconquered Floor 18 and ascend to universal stardom. Oh, and survive.”
Conventional writing advice says to start in the midst of the action, but I’ve never seen it adopted with as much gusto as in Matt Dinniman’s LitRPG novel Dungeon Crawler Carl. The first chapter begins with four pages of introduction to Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s showcat Princess Donut. Then, over the next five pages, the modern world as they know it ends, the infinite reaches of the galaxy open up, billions die, a galactic hyper-corporation turns their lives into an adventure game, and they, among millions of others, are thrown with no gear into a starter dungeon operating on DnD logic, video game mechanics, and streamer showmanship. Welcome to the galaxy’s favorite game show: Dungeon Crawler World.
Inside the dungeon, Carl has an interface he can interact with, a mini-map that he can use to see enemies, a dungeon announcer that’s as snarky as it is sadistic, and achievements galore. Enemies also leave bodies that Carl can loot for crafting materials that he stores in his inventory, and killing them even provides experience to level up and get stronger.
If all that sounds somewhat familiar, the LitRPG genre as a whole is very unsubtle about its influences. The term LitRPG itself is short for Literary Role Playing Game, and it’s a genre defined by the combination of Fantasy and Sci-fi with mechanics from role-playing games (nowadays, video game mechanics too). However, the whole archetype of “characters trapped in a fantasy world with video game mechanics” may sound quite overdone to you, and you would be forgiven for feeling that way. The LitRPG premise has found a significant presence in modern Young Adult fiction, propagated primarily through Japanese, Korean, and Chinese media. Fortunately for those sick of the Asiatic tropes like cheat code abilities, overpowered party members, and ultra-rare items that fall into the MC’s lap, don’t worry — Carl is a through-and-through Western LitRPG.
What that means is Carl draws more from the progenitors of the genre than current contemporaries. For fans of newer LitRPGs, it’s closer to Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint than Sword Art Online, but the feel of the story is very different from either. The core dynamic of our dynamic duo really feels like characters that learn to synergize with each other instead of playing out stereotypes. Carl’s party member (technically, he’s her party member as she’s the leader) is Princess Donut, the pageant-winning cat who quickly leapfrogs him in terms of power. Her naivety, power level, and slight haughtiness create a fun dynamic with the pragmatic Carl, and stop him from min-maxing all the entertainment from the dungeon. She has her own moments of glory, too, and shores up Carl’s weaknesses in unexpected ways, slowly going from something to make Carl’s life harder to a true, lovable, and dependable ally, instead of just a mascot.
The goal of the dungeon is simple: beat the historically unconquered Floor 18 and ascend to universal stardom. Oh, and survive. This is harder than it sounds for Carl and Princess Donut, considering they have to face all sorts of perilous mobs, traps, hazards, and the most dangerous creature of all: other Crawlers. Their new daily routine is to grind levels, craft new weapons, and roll all the loot boxes they can get, under the guidance of their mentor: a guild master who seems to know a bit more than he’s letting on. It really has the makings of a classic DnD campaign.
Since the first LitRPG, which had its protagonist transported into their DnD character, intermedial DNA has flowed throughout western LitRPGs — including Carl. The humor and settings are inundated with references, such as Princess Donut’s signature spell: Magic Missile. The name should ring a bell to anyone who has dabbled in DnD or Baldur’s Gate, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are direct and subtle references to real-world games, shows, music, and pop culture, like the punk goblin shamans that the duo encounter, named Rory and Lorelai (Dinniman showing his age with a Gilmore Girls reference). Carl channels the intrinsic intermediality of LitRPGs into the core of the story by baking these cultural references into the narrative fabric itself. Dinniman lays out a robust in-universe reason for why these wall-breaking references can exist, and it’s also why the humor — which is arguably one of Carl’s defining features — is so entrenched in all aspects of the story.
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The best way to describe Carl’s style of jokes are Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy snark mixed with 2000s derp random humor. As you might guess, it can be quite hit or miss. There are gags thrown in that feel like they’re for the sake of it, such as the dungeon announcer’s thinly veiled and salacious appreciation for Carl’s feet, or the Llamas — literal, sentient Llamas — which Carl and Princess Donut encounter that turn out to run a floor-wide drug cartel. In spite of its randomness, the humor is inseparable from Carl’s storytelling. There are real narrative consequences for some of these jokes. Carl, for example, begins to get equipment that buffs him if he’s barefoot, forcing him to display his trotters for the billions watching.
If you find yourself thinking that the dungeon sounds kind of fun, Carl would be willing to trade places in a heartbeat. There is a grittiness beneath the Millennial humor, which Carl constantly reminds himself of in order to maintain perspective on the grotesque reality of the situation. Reality means real bodies, real violence, and real consequences. It’s easy to forget that the NPCs are sentient beings manipulated and maimed by a hyper conglomerate for entertainment, and those mobs you grind for levels probably once had a family . . . and Carl doesn’t let you forget it quickly. But the dungeon is a cruel place, and Carl isn’t a power fantasy like many LitRPG compadres; his first combat encounter is not glamorous nor suave, but brutal, messy and desperate.
That’s because Carl is a standard bloke. He’s just a dude (ex-coast guard, not even a “secret badass” origin story like ex-police or military) getting over a breakup, who happens to have a crafty head on him. That larger-than-average walnut, though, is able to wrangle him out of some pretty dire situations in ways that maintain the rules of the dungeon system, even rule-lawyering some of them to suit his own purposes. That struggle and escape within the narrative confines is core to what makes Carl fun to read. It feels like watching an outplay in a game, and that thought of “Damn, I think I could do that.” You get the same information as Carl, and you have the same opportunities to work out a solution.
This puzzle-like quality is what I loved the most about Carl. The important thing to keep in mind is that this series isn’t trying to be a commentary on life or anything deep. It’s entertainment, and it does that very well. Every new situation and tool had me wondering how Carl would use it, and every jam they encountered, I was spiritually in the huddle with them, brainstorming a solution. Add in the blitz pacing of situations and constant jokes, which do land for many, and you’re thrust through the story in a way that feels effortless. Much like a classic TV series binge, the characters keep running into sticky situations, but that’s not why you watch; you just watch to see what happens next, and Carl draws from the same well. Of course it does — Carl and Princess Donut are the stars of their own TV show.
Carl’s whole adventure is televised, à la reality TV, and there are benefits for being popular with the galaxy. This one additional dimension is perhaps my favorite inclusion of Carl, as it sets the ball rolling for Carl to hit its stride. Now Carl needs to be entertaining, not just focused on raw survival, and it adds layers to his actions — a perspective that Princess Donut is eager to provide. The audience is always watching, and there are many benefits to being a fan favorite; this circumstance robs Carl of his preferred sensible but boring solutions.
It’s not just the audience, too; there is a surprising amount of depth that slowly accrues over the novel. As the cast expands and Dinniman settles into the world he built, suddenly Carl is navigating intergalactic politics, interpersonal moral quandaries, anarchy towards the dungeon system, and, of course, trying to entertain an audience of quadrillions.
The more meta and layered Carl gets, the better it becomes. You really see just how many minute edges Carl has to constantly eke out to survive. For example, the realization that, because the dungeon is a broadcast show, there are long-term narrative arcs constantly in motion that haven’t been resolved yet. And if producers spend billions on crafting a storyline revolving around you, they are less inclined to let you die anticlimactically to a random goblin or trap. This epiphany, which makes sense given the setting and is deducible from information present since the beginning of the book, drastically changes how Carl approaches the dungeon. It takes a bit to get to the stage where the characters, motivations, and mechanics are established and all wound up, but it’s very worth getting there because when they start bouncing off each other, it’s phenomenal.
Dinniman hasn’t reinvented the wheel with Carl. Rather, he has iterated on the LitRPG concept and made a Pirelli in a sea of street tires. By combining various influences and seasoning them with various niche cultural references, it feels like Dinniman has taken the genre back to its roots–but with a modern lick of paint. Carl’s current popularity is very understandable; unadulterated fun and incredibly easy to get into. I was skeptical too, having gorged myself sick on Asian LitRPG webnovels back in my youth, and I was ready for another tired old tropefest. I’m now on book five of Carl, and I have no intentions of stopping. Despite my initial reservations, Princess Donut and Carl have won me over just like how they’ve won the galaxy. Dinniman scatterblasts fun at you, and something inevitably ends up sticking amongst its humor and randomness. You definitely do not want to experience the dungeon, but you’ll sure as hell enjoy reading Carl and Princess Donut do it.
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