Dungeon Crawler Carl

4 stars, Metaphorosis reviews

Summary
Aliens have come to harvest Earth, and everyone who isn't killed is invited to join a dungeon crawl for the entertainment of Earth's new owners - and a chance to win control of the Earth itself.

Review
There's not a lot of surprise in Dungeon Crawler Carl, but that's okay. The initial premise is odd, verging on farcical – aliens kill almost everyone on Earth and many of the rest enter a newly generated dungeon. There's what I hope is a nod to Douglas Adams at the start (if it's not, it's a ripoff), and Dinniman mines a similar light-hearted comedic vein. Greg Costikyan's Another Day, Another Dungeon also comes to mind, though the parody here is of video roleplaying games.

Once the setup (which I found a bit rocky) is out of the way, Dinniman takes the initial premise pretty much where you'd expect, with in jokes about RPGs and inventory, and fairly stock characters. But while he's doing the expected, he does it in quite a fun way. For one thing, he does the ‘right' things: this is not one of those horror movies where no one picks up the dropped weapons; when Carl sees a takeable object, he takes it, and Dinniman gets him to do fun things with them.

There are some moments of discomfort – does he really need to kill all these innocents just for points? – and Dinniman moved a little more quickly past them than I thought warranted. But most of the action and commentary is timed and delivered quite well. It's fun, funny, a quick read, and I did find myself interested to go on to the next volume (and apparently there are six in total).

I didn't go in with high expectations – humor is hard to pull off consistently – but Dinniman does a good job here, and I look forward to continuing the series.

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review.