Dungeon Crawler Carl

My sources for book recommendations all seemed to love this book, but I absolutely did not get the hype when reading it. However, some of my own preferences with the genre may play a role with my perception of Dungeon Crawler Carl, by Matt Dinniman.

First of all, I am a sucker for stories about a person and their cat. Donut’s full name (Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk) and character was probably the only thing that made me laugh in this entire book. Other than that, I don’t get the humor at all. There’s nothing worse than a comedy book that’s not funny, because then it just becomes boring. And I feel like I’m not understanding something because so many people really like this series. Maybe my sense of humor is just really brainrotted; I mean, I find roblox edits hilarious. Yep, I think I’m the problem.

Another thing I really don’t like to read about is world-building using video game RPG logic. I think I have residual trauma from Sword Art Online and related animes/webtoons, but any story explaining character powers through ‘leveling up’ or ‘legendary mystery crates’ is a huge no for me (with the sole exception of Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, that webtoon is goated). I hoped that this book being a comedy would rid me of this preference, but unfortunately that didn’t work. Also, I didn’t like the writing all that much. It felt like a children’s book with occasional swearing.

This book was a 3/10 because it was just so incredibly hard to get through. I will however credit Princess Donut with the three points.