A slightly skeptical but ultimately positive review of Dungeon Crawler Carl

I have it on somewhat decent authority that Dungeon Crawler Carl is the best that LitRPG has to offer, which leaves me a little concerned about the subgenre. (For the uninitiated, LitRPG is exactly what it sounds like: literature plus role-playing games. It usually feels as though the main character has been thrust into a video game. Sometimes the main character actually has been transported into a video game, but not always. What's important is that the world that the characters navigate has gamified elements: things like damage and experience can be quantified, and there's often a quest or goal at the center of the narrative.)

My feelings about Dungeon Crawler Carl are mixed. It's entertaining but not brilliant. If LitRPG truly hasn't produced something better, then the average quality of books in this subgenre must be pretty low. I'm, of course, happy to be proven wrong. Though Dungeon Crawler Carl is not my first foray into LitRPG, my experience in this realm is definitely limited. I would say Dungeon Crawler Carl is my favorite LitRPG so far. I wouldn't say it's excellent.

But my intention here isn't to hate on Dungeon Crawler Carl (or LitRPG). It's a fine book. It reads like an expertly edited and produced Twitch or YouTube stream of someone playing a video game, which is honestly impressive, though it isn't really my personal cup of tea. The humor is also not to my taste. Too many jokes overstay their welcome. And some of the sex jokes can't possibly age well. Of course, humor is super subjective, so if you like the sound of gleefully profane banter paired with escalating cosmic absurdity, then Carl's antics may drag a laugh out of you.

Gripes aside, what just about saves this book for me is a number of scenes that make me suspect that this series is trying to be more than a string of unfunny jokes about foot fetishes. For example, there's a whole section dedicated to helping the elderly. Carl, our protagonist, doesn't swoop in like a superhero to save them. He also doesn't treat them like necessary collateral damage. He and their caregivers do what little they can, and it's not easy, smooth, or convenient. It simply exposes some of the genuine questions that arise when the world is colonized by aliens who want to stick random humans inside a televised role-playing game. (Did I mention the plot is bonkers?) Another version of this book could have swept those questions under the rug in favor of sending Carl on his next big adventure. It's refreshing that Dungeon Crawler Carl isn't that sort of book.

The scene with the nursing home -- along with a few other similar moments scattered throughout the book, including one that involves screwing over a cop -- tells me that Dungeon Crawler Carl is a dystopian story that is about more than just the aesthetics of overthrowing evil empires or corporations. It actually understands dystopias. There is a thoughtful and coherent perspective in here on a variety of political, economic, and ideological issues. Certain pockets of the TTRGP world have proven themselves to be committed to antifascism, and it feels as though Matt Dinniman is drawing a lot of inspiration from those folks. He certainly refrains from turning this story into a power fantasy about Carl overcoming the odds simply by being awesome. (By most measures, his cat, Princess Donut the Queen Anne Chonk, is more awesome than he is.) I'm not about to declare that Dinniman has given us the next 1984, The Handmaid's Tale, or even The Hunger Games, but Dungeon Crawler Carl at least doesn't totally miss the point of those other dystopian books. It actually gets the point better than most. George Orwell, Margaret Atwood, and Suzanne Collins have spawned a lot of bad and problematic copycats. Dinniman isn't one of them, even if there might be some overlap in target audience.

While this book is light on any actual commentary, I kind of trust future installments to be more insightful and impactful. And I have no hesitations about continuing with the series. At worst, I'm going to devour a bunch of fun and compulsively readable popcorn books for when I need a romp to pass the time. At best, those books might have something of substance to reveal about exploitation, entertainment, trauma, and authoritarianism. Either way, I expect to enjoy myself.