Personally, I think that the bones that make Dungeon Crawler Carl are there from the very first book: gruesome brutality combined with gut-busting humor, consistent rules and exploits of those rules to advance within the dungeon, and a very human cost that you feel to your bones. However, I also think that the series doesn’t come into its own and become the Dungeon Crawler Carl that’s surging to the top of the zeitgeist until Carl get’s the Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook. Once that happens, “I Will Break You […]

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 […]

I have now recommended Dungeon Crawler Carl to… six people directly? All six are on my wife’s down line so she’s doing well in this little cultural MLM. This Inevitable Ruin continues to escalate the emotion in serious ways. It would be difficult to discuss them without spoilers, so I am going to let this be another extremely short review. Let me just say: this is the book where Carl gets to feel feelings for a little bit. He’s spent so much time getting raked […]

I’m going to write an even shorter review than usual today because the fucking cat ran across my super nice mechanical keyboard, set some setting which disabled keys that I need, and so I’m writing on my backup keyboard, which is Dell garbage. The Eyes of the Bedlam Bride continues the trend of Carl stories absolutely ruling. The series increases in both intensity and excitement, new stakes are added, and it keeps getting funnier. Several fan favorite characters come into their own across this story, including […]

Dinniman has done it again. The fifth Carl book continues to escalate the stakes, the action, and the emotion. Carl continues his active opposition to the Borant Corporation, which gets stricter with its rules even as Carl gets more open with his resistance. On the seventh floor of the dungeon, additional players are added: hunters, outsiders to the dungeon who pay for the opportunity to hunt the crawlers for sport. Carl takes that personally, and goes on in no uncertain terms, a killing spree. There […]