1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Do NOT Sleep on Dungeon Crawler Carl
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.
Comment by jaime-the-lion at 25/02/2025 at 01:47 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Didn’t get far at all, just finished book one yesterday. You make a good point in the personality aspect, he definitely has motives. I am interested in learning more about his backstory, maybe I should give the next book a try to see if I find it more compelling as the story matures. Based on some of the comments here, I shouldn’t be treating book one as a standalone novel, and more as act one of a single plot arc.