Comment by jaime-the-lion on 24/02/2025 at 14:47 UTC

8 upvotes, 2 direct replies (showing 2)

View submission: Do NOT Sleep on Dungeon Crawler Carl

Just read the first book for book club. Safe to say, you can sleep on this book. Overall, I did not like it, but there were positive moments. My review below, if you care.

The Good:

• Donut is the funniest character. I love how she keeps offering insight into just how little Bea cared about Carl.

• Dinniman writes absurdity really well. I really felt the “what?” vibe he was going for.

• I really understood the RPG he built. The health, mana, levels, items, minimap. That’s got to be hard to write in a way that makes sense, and I appreciate the world building.

The Bad:

• Relies on juvenile humor more often than not. Someone should tell Mr. Dinniman, there’s nothing funny about swearing on its own.

• Plot is equal parts Hitchhiker’s Guide and Hunger Games, but not as funny as the first or as compelling as the second.

• Carl has no personality. I don’t get him at all. He’s a mary sue heroic everyman, who is smart, but not haughty, brave, but cautious, strong, but tender, and he breezes through challenges.

• Building on that, I never felt like the characters were in any real danger. They defeated each boss in like two pages.

• Dinniman uses the “I have a plan” without telling us the plan to build suspense before action sequences, and I fucking hate it. Christopher Paolini did this too.

• I get that the format is constrained by the serial nature of the story Mr. Dinniman telling, but I felt that the first installment had almost no payoff or conclusion. It’s just cliffhanger after cliffhanger in act one of a looong series, and I don’t have the heart to read on.

Replies

Comment by Comrade-Chernov at 25/02/2025 at 00:02 UTC

3 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Totally understand if my comment doesn't change your mind, but I had similar thoughts about Carl at first when I started reading. As the books go on though, he develops quite a bit of personality and you learn a lot more about his backstory and the stuff he's dealing with in his past. I find him to be a very compelling character now. As the novelty of the situation wears off the horror and the loss starts to creep into Carl's mind, and with it comes the rage and the desire for the revenge.

Comment by JancariusSeiryujinn at 25/02/2025 at 00:25 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I'm going to disagree with you on a few of these points:

I don't think I've ever seen it said that Carl doesn't have a personality. He's a short-tempered dude with a ton of childhood trauma (>!Stemming from his abusive dad, his mom's suicide, his dad's abandonment, and so on!<). He's fundamentally a good person, in that he tries to help people who do not obviously benefit him (Such as the Meadowlark residents in book 1) and is angry when people are shitty (see his reactions to any player killers). I'm not sure I can agree at all with cautious or 'breezes through challenges' as a descriptors. He's smart, for sure. But he regularly takes big fucking gambles.

On the "I have a plan" thing. Dinniman uses plans the way most movies and TV shows use plans - That is, if they tell you the whole plan in advance of the action, you know it will go wrong (because no one wants to listen to a plan, then be told 'and everything went according to plan'). If the character says "here's the plan" and it cuts away, then the plan is going to work. The point of the "I have a plan" line is to establish that the character did not just 'wing it'.

I'm guessing you didn't get far into the series. The Hoarder, the Juicer, and the krakakern are all basically very minor, insignificant bosses.