Dungeon Crawler Carl Book 1, Part 1

 

Summary: Book Image Source

Just as I described in my last post, this book starts off with every man-man structure on Earth sinking into the ground at once, and our main characters, Carl and his ex-girlfriend’s cat Donut, barely escaping death as Carl was trying to wrangle Donut back inside after she escaped. After the collapse, an omniscient and omnipotent system was transposed onto the Earth and the world was the new platform to which the gameshow, Dungeon Crawler World, would be played on. Carl carries Donut to the dungeon’s entrance to escape the consequence that the new system illuded to in case anybody wanted to stay on the surface, and there he enters the first level of the Dungeon. Here, Carl receives his first achievement, which are the dungeon’s way of rewarding crawlers (contestants) for basically doing anything worth being considered an achievement, whether that be creating something new, dogging/causing death in a creative/interesting way, or (in Carl’s case) being the first person to enter the dungeon with their pet, which in turn gave him a random item that resolved into a pet biscuit which gave donut incredible magic capabilities, human intellect, and the ability to speak. However, while she had only gained intelligence in this moment, donut still has all her previous memories and feelings and pretends that she always this intellect and (because she was actually a show cat before the collapse) completely develops a very pampered diva-like personality.

After Donut is fully introduced as a main character the book soon reveals that on each floor, there is actually a time limit before the entire floor is destroyed along with those sill on it. In order to avoid this grizzly death crawlers would have to make their way to a stairwell, which are randomly located throughout the dungeon and all have a “Boss monster” — a type of monster that is multitudes stronger than normal monsters and likely has some sort of gimmick or defining characteristic compared to the others– guarding it that they would have to get through. It is also explained (by the system) that in “safe rooms” (places where a strict rule of no violence is enforced) crawlers can receive their rewards they got from achievements and everyday there will be a “recap episode” highlighting all the interesting things occurring across the dungeon that both the crawlers and the viewers can tune into. Also provided in their safe room is another important character to the story, Mordecai, an alien guide who is suppose to help them traverse the dungeon by providing information from the safe room.

 

Normal Wolf Monster   v.s.   Boss Wolf Monster

While many things were introduced towards the beginning of the book, once the author was done setting all that up, he focused on the actual fighting the two were doing, with Carl constantly kicking and stomping things and Donut using her magic, to increase their “Level” to become strong enough to defeat the boss guarding the stairs. While they kept grinding to rise their level, many things had happened; Carl had inadvertently drawn the A.I.’s attention with his constant use of his feet to kill things, and he had been given incredible equipment that only worked if he specifically did not wear any shoes or pants (but he could keep his heart-covered boxers). On the other hand, Donut had been given things to make her look more princess-like –such as a tiara– and boost her magic. Eventually Carl came across a goblin settlement that wasn’t outwardly hostile to him and he bought a large amount of explosives, which was then displayed on the recap episode and made him look like an insane person, cementing his image in everybody’s minds.

What i liked:

The author does an extremely good job avoiding the problem that most LITRPG books have, which is setting up a system good enough to not look unstructured, but also flexible enough to not hinder the author’s ideas or intended storyline. While the system does stick to many standard conventions, such as the leveling system, it also allows much more variety in its achievement system, where it can spawn items that the author chooses to naturally drive the narrative along the paths

Thumbs Up Source                         the author wants. The author also develops a really good sense of pressure throughout the book with the looming countdown till the floor collapse always there in the back of the listeners’ minds as well as the characters’ minds. The author also masterfully utilizes this pressure to give the characters in the story drive and constantly put them in situations where all aspects of themselves are tested, exploring what a character is willing to do to become stronger and hopefully survive another day.

What could’ve been improved:

The author focused a lot on the setup of the series in the beginning, throwing a lot of information at the listener all at once. Had the author spread it out, it would have obviously been easier for the listener to process, however this also ties into the author trying to have the audience relate to the characters. The characters in the story were also 

                              Wrench Source                                  thrown into this situation and given all this information at once having the same sense of overwhelming pressure, allowing the audience see the characters’ human sides and form a deeper connection to them. Another point in this part that could’ve been improved were the descriptions of certain things, such as different creatures with 15 moving parts or cluttered rooms where the author went into detail about what was in each pile, while in many cases these details added to the world-building and immersion as well as some cheeky foreshadowing, some went on for way too long about arbitrary things that would never come up again.

Overall, this part of the book was a good introduction into the series that is Dungeon Crawler Carl, but was missing a lot of the “meat” of the book as one may say, which shines through throughout the rest of the series.