Review: Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman

 

I finally jumped on the hype train for this series. I have been hearing nothing but good things and the two things that hooked me were a cat named Princess Donut and heart printed boxers. This was an indie series and now it has been picked up and in stores every where. To be honest, I do not like the traditional covers. I like the covers above because I feel that it makes the story more intriguing and the cat is cute and the boxers are on full display.

It is very Hunger Games ish with the whole thing being televised and interviews being conducted and people dying. The book starts off with a guy named Carl breaking up with his girl because she is a cheating bitch. Carl is smoking a cigarette and it is 2 in the morning. He opens the window and the ex girlfriend's prize show cat, Princess Donut escapes into the cold night and immediately regrets and starts meowing her head off.

Carl has to go outside to rescue the cat and when he grabs the cat, every building and structure disappears. Carl is perplexed and freezing his ass off in his leather jacket, heart boxers and too small pink crocs on his feet. A giant hole then opens in front of him and he goes inside after hearing an annoucement from an alien race saying that Earth has renegged on a minerals contract and that everyone who was outside of a building as lived and will get the opportunity to live by competing in a 18 level dungeon crawl that will be televised.

Carl and Princess Donut are walking and trying to figure out what the actual hell is going on and then they run into their first baddies. A group of goblins who are hell bent on killing Carl and Donut. They are trying to reach their guild hall and talk to the guild master who will help them with inventory and their player menus, but they have to kill the goblins first. 

This became gory so quickly and I was not expecting it. I really enjoyed all the achievement announcements and thought they were silly goofy. As I continued reading, the pace of the book became slower and more reptitive and the constant achievements became boring and I would skim through those because I stopped caring. 

I was also bored with the action parts and skimmed over those as well. I think that if I listened to the audiobook, I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I loved Princess Donut. I liked how she was confident when needed but showed her timid side when Carl wanted to split up. 

I honestly don't know how I will feel if something happens to her. I will be picking up the second book this summer, but I will listen to it.