Dungeon Crawler Carl

I've been meaning to get to Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl for awhile now, but was also putting it off in case I get hooked because it's a fairly big series. But a friend lent me the book, so I decided to take a break from Landover to give it a read.

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, aliens have decided to mine the Earth for resources. They collapse all the buildings, killing anyone who was inside, and invite the survivors to enter into a newly created dungeon in Earth's interior. This all happened around 2am Pacific time, so most of the people from North America just died. But Carl, our protagonist, just happened to be outside in his underwear trying to get his ex-girlfriend's cat Donut out of a tree when it happened, so he grabbed the cat and made for the dungeon stairs trying to stay warm (and not really understanding what was happening). They quickly find themselves in a D&D-like dungeon where it is kill or be killed. The event is being televised live for the galaxy, and the participants (or "crawlers" as the event calls them) have been outfitted with a HUD-like interface (HUD=Heads Up Display - a common video-game term) in their heads and can level up their skills and abilities and gain loot. Over 12,000,000 crawlers entered the dungeon before the stairs closed, and within the first hour or so, that number is already down to about 10,000,000. The dungeon is deadly and the galaxy loves watching all the gory details (while also rooting for crawlers who manage to beat the odds). If anyone makes it to level 18, they will become the rightful ruler of what's left of the world. But no one has ever made it that far in one of these world dungeons before. So Carl and Donut (who quickly gains the ability to talk and becomes a proper crawler as well) are fighting to survive in this dungeon where the odds of surviving are incredibly low.

I enjoyed Carl and Donut a lot. Their interactions are a lot of fun. Donut is of course my favourite: she is a newly more intelligent house-cat, so while she knows stuff about the world, she's also learning rather like a child. Plus she's a cat: her outlook on life and what's happening is rather different. And of course she has full confidence that she will win and be properly crowned the rightful ruler of the Earth.

I found Carl to be an interesting character, too. He was a coastguard-man who worked as a technician, so he was in fairly good shape and knew a bit about brawling, which definitely came in handy when he first entered the dungeon. Plus he's played video games before and could fairly intuitively figure out the game interface. While he seems like a loner, he has a heart and tries to do the right thing when he can (though sometimes it's hard to decide what that right thing is, especially inside the dungeon). Plus the two of them genuinely care for each other (he was planning on selling all of his belongings in an effort to buy Donut off his ex). 

But the story itself is a fairly dark read. Yes, there's humour. But there's so much death. Everyone (including the mobs) are cogs in this big entertainment machine, so things that happen are quite dark. Like the Spanish woman who was changed by the game makers into a 15-foot monstrosity who was crying for help. Or the goblins who were killed as collateral damage when Carl threw a bomb into the boss room. So while I enjoyed large parts of the story, a lot of moments like that made me really sad, and I'm not sure that I want to read more of the series if it gets even darker (and the author says in the Acknowledgement at the end that it will get darker).