Really cheating my ass off with this one, but whatever, I’m giving myself a little grace because my love for and rereading of this story is sincere. I finished Dungeon Crawler Carl and truly, immediately restarted them. I really can’t remember the last time I did this with a series. I do it with movies, TV shows, and even video games often, but restarting a book series as soon as I’ve finished it is something I haven’t done since maybe middle school with Redwall.
In Dungeon Crawler Carl, it’s revealed that the mining rights to the planet Earth were sold long ago, and the aliens who own us have come to collect. This is not the first time this has happened, and indeed it’s happened so many times across the universe that the cosmos’ most popular TV show takes place as a result of this: Dungeon Crawler World. The way it works is that, prior to the mining beginning, all matter on the earth, apart from a few unlucky million people who happen to be on the surface, is sucked under the ground and turned into a massive, sprawling, AI-powered dungeon. Quadrillions of viewers across the universe then tune into this shitshow, to watch and laugh as the planet’s denizens suffer for their entertainment.
Enter Carl, who was outside chasing his ex-girlfriend’s prize-winning show cat, Princess Donut, when the Crawl began. He and Donut enter the dungeon, Donut immediately eats a magical pet biscuit and becomes a magical talking cat, and shit ensues.
On the reread, I wanted a couple things: primarily just to revisit the pain and glory of this story. It’s fucking brutal. Awful things happen, even in book one. I had the good fortune to meet and talk with Matt Dinniman, who is completely awesome, and he made it clear that the anti-capitalist themes within the story are not an accident. He wants (my interpretation, not quoting him…) to paint a picture of how brutal a system like unfettered capitalism can be. As such, the people are treated like a resource, and that resource is not valued.
The other thing I wanted was to come at this story with experienced eyes. This starts silly and simple, but it becomes something sprawling, exciting, incisive, and fun. This is one of my favorite stories. Put it in your god damned veins.