Dungeon Crawler Carl (Matt Dinniman)

One minute, Carl is trying to coax his ex-girlfriend's cat (Princess Donut) out of a tree in the middle of a freezing night. The next, he finds himself one of Earth's few survivors as he is shepherded into a dungeon and told to fight for his life. Apparently, the apocalypse will be televised to an intergalactic audience, and Carl and Donut must find a way to survive by gaining new skills, leveling up, and finding a stairway to the next level of the dungeon before the current one collapses. If they can make it to level 18, they may just survive . . . but this game might be rigged.

This book—the first in a Literary Role-Playing Game (LitRPG) series—is all the rage, and I wanted to see why. I enjoyed it; its absurdist humor and clear parallels to video game RPGs were fun (but beware profanity, vulgarity, and violence). There is also an overarching element of mystery involving those responsible for Earth's collapse and their motives/goals which was captivating and stays unresolved as the book ends. Speaking of—it ends somewhat abruptly, making it clear that the series is not a sequence of self-contained tales but one long story arc. With book eight due out this year and no end in sight, I am questioning if I want to invest in reading the rest of the series. But I do want to know what happens next . . . so I'll keep going for now.

Rating: B+