ASIN: B08BKGYQXW ID #116033 |
Dungeon Crawler Carl: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 (Rated: 18+)
Product Type: Kindle StoreReviewer: Jeff Review Rated: 18+ | Amazon's Price: Price N/A
|
|
| ||||
Further Comments... | ||
This wasn't my first foray into LitRPG; as a huge fan of TTRPGs, I've read several books in the genre over the years and this was one of the better titles. For me, the biggest issue with this genre is that a lot of authors hyper-focus on the "leveling up" trope of the genre and sacrificing both character and story to do so. In the case of this book, there was more effort put into the character and story work than most. My favorite part of this book was the worldbuilding. The idea of an alien race coming and collapsing every building on the planet to make a subterranean "world dungeon" for the surviving humans to compete in as part of a galaxy-wide televised reality show in the vein of The Running Man. And the author clearly has no shortage of creative ideas when it comes to ways to mash-up Earth popular culture to create antagonists, loot, and all manner of other things. Where the book falls apart a bit is in its length and repetition. This book was almost 500 pages long and it probably didn't need to be more than about half that. The book spent a lot of time talking about what would happen eventually as the protagonist (the titular Carl) and his house cat partner Princess Donut progressed through the levels of the dungeon, but the actual progression through the dungeon was very, very slow. They'd fight some creatures, get some loot, explore their character build options, talk about how a bunch of information won't be revealed until later, rinse and repeat over and over again. I liked the worldbuilding enough to continue on with this series for another installment, but there's definitely room for improvement. I would consider this book good for a LitRPG title, but that's a pretty low bar which this book just barely manages to clear. I'm not sure I'm in for the long haul (there are currently eight books in this series), but I'm definitely curious enough to see where the next one goes. | ||
Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of Dungeon Crawler Carl: Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1 from Amazon.Com!
Created Mar 15, 2026 at 7:14pm •
Submit your own review...
| ||