Dungeon Crawler Carl
Matt Dinniman, 2020
Fantasy Science fictionContemporary fictionGraphic novels & humour
Earth is repurposed as a reality-TV dungeon crawl, and the only contestant with a cat can tell the apocalypse is being narrated to him in the language of a mineral rights form. The voice is dry and lyrical at once, moving fast through absurd apocalypse scenes while dread and wonder sit under the jokes.
Feels like wonder and dread. About freedom, power and memory.
Who it’s for
You may enjoy this if you like comic science fiction that treats catastrophe as a bureaucratic reality show, especially with a cat in the mix. Be aware that it began as an online serial, so the early chapters can feel episodic and rougher than the later ones.
Why read it
It offers a funny, grim ride through a world where paperwork and survival collide, and its full-cast audio adds a lively layer if you want an alternative to reading.
A page from the book
The difference between a building being destroyed and a building being taken away.
The building smashed down to the ground. I watched it happen. The seven-story apartment building was there one moment, and then it was gone. But it hadn’t disappeared. I was looking right at Mrs. Parsons when it went down. It was like the building was a massive tin can that had been crushed by a giant cosmic boot. I saw it, and I heard it. Wind rushed at me, and it was instantly dark outside. The streetlamp just to my left was gone. The buildings all around me were gone. The cars on the street were gone, too. Matt Dinniman.Dinniman serialized Carl's first levels online in 2020 before self-publishing; the audiobook, voiced by Jeff Hays with full-cast effects, is largely what made the series a word-of-mouth hit.
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Questions readers ask
- Is Dungeon Crawler Carl for me?
- You may enjoy this if you like comic science fiction that treats catastrophe as a bureaucratic reality show, especially with a cat in the mix. Be aware that it began as an online serial, so the early chapters can feel episodic and rougher than the later ones.
- What is Dungeon Crawler Carl like?
- The voice is dry and lyrical at once, moving fast through absurd apocalypse scenes while dread and wonder sit under the jokes. Feels like wonder and dread. About freedom, power and memory.
- What should I read after Dungeon Crawler Carl?
- If you liked Dungeon Crawler Carl, try The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Neil Gaiman), The Amber Spyglass (Philip Pullman) and Fahrenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury).
A taste of the feed
The moment you decide something strange never happened.
I wondered where the illusion of the second moon had come from, but I only wondered for a moment, and then I dismissed it from my thoughts. Perhaps it was an afterimage, I decided, or a ghost: something that had stirred in my mind, for a moment, so powerfully that I believed it to be real, but now was gone, and faded into the past like a memory forgotten, or a shadow into the dusk.
The Ocean at the End of the Lane · Neil Gaiman
What if oblivion were not an ending but a scattering into the world.
Even if it means oblivion, friends, I’ll welcome it, because it won’t be nothing. We’ll be alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves; we’ll be falling in the raindrops and blowing in the fresh breeze; we’ll be glittering in the dew under the stars and the moon out there in the physical world, which is our true home and always was.
The Amber Spyglass · Philip Pullman
A city lit entirely by lamps, and the dark it can't explain.
In the city of Ember, the sky was always dark. The only light came from great floodlamps mounted on the buildings and at the tops of poles in the middle of the larger squares. When the lights were on, they cast a yellowish glow over the streets; people walking by threw long shadows that shortened and then stretched out again. When the lights were off, as they were between nine at night and six in the morning, the city was so dark that people might as well have been wearing blindfolds.
The City of Ember · Jeanne DuPrau
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