Where Carl Has a Long Road Ahead

Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It was really good. Just like they said.

I have kind of a distrust for highly-recommended books on TikTok. I find my tastes and the tastes of most reviewers--even in the genres I like--are usually so different that we just aren't compatible. Except we agree here. Well done, booktok.

The premise of this book and series, that the MC and many, many others are trapped in a Dungeons & Dragons live action to-the-death reality show is pretty funny to begin with. And there is lots of humor, lots of tongue-in-cheek dialogue, lots of comic book-style action. But it's also all real, at least in the universe of the book, and the people really are living and dying based on how they react to the dangers in this manufactured arena.

Without belaboring the details of a much-reviewed book, I'll just say it was almost exactly as entertaining as I hoped. I hoped it would have interesting action; it does. I hoped for humor; it's 21st century funny; I hoped for characters to care about; they're here, and they're quirky, and they don't just grow on the reader but they develop over the course of the plot.

The odd characters that somehow become very real reminds me of 60s and 70s and 80s-era Clifford Simak. He always had goblins and robots and neanderthals and ghosts in his science fiction and fantasy, and they were strangely compelling and sympathetic. It should have felt bizarre, but but somehow it works. There's a lot of that here. And the blend of action plot and ironic humor puts me in the mind of John Scalzi's science fiction. It's a very close match, with LOL dialogue and snark mixed with earnest, working-together-to-stay-alive action. So my guess is that you will like this if you like Scalzi. And if you don't like Scalzi--what's the matter with you?

JK. To each their own.

I'm gonna get the next one pretty quick. I read this faster by far than I usually read a book. That's my testimonial. Recommended.

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