The events in this second book in the super-popular Dungeon Crawler Carl series continue immediately after the first one, where hapless and resourceful Carl survived the decimation of Earth to end up running and fighting for his own life in the dungeon (like the kind one finds in RPG video games) that the world has been transformed into for the purposes of an intergalactic game show. With his ex-girlfriend’s now-intelligent cat as his bossy companion, Carl encounters all kinds of bizarre and magical creatures, traps, monsters, and enemies along the way. Even though this post-apocalyptic world seems pretty heavy and serious, it’s actually treated in a very funny, cartoonish and tongue-in-cheek way. With each book, Carl, Princess Donut (the cat) and any other survivors and allies descend into another level of the dungeon, to face new challenges and threats.

As I started into this second book, I was surprised at how much explanation (i.e. info-dumping) was still required. The rules of the game are quite extensive. There are game guides and manager characters (in the case of Donut, her manager is a being named Mordecai) who provide background information about the game world, about the rules of the world and of the magic in the world, and about the traps and creatures encountered. Normally readers complain about info-dumping as a drag on a story, but no one seems to have a problem with it in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. The reasons is probably tone, since all the info here is dumped in a hilarious and fun way — especially if you are reading via audiobook. 

One of the best aspects of this series is the sarcastic, satirical humour that is written into all of it. The book is essentially narrated by Carl, and he has a very resigned-yet-ironic sense of humour about what happens. Alongside the humour, the audiobook narration is the best thing about these books. It is truly spectacular how narrator Jeff Hays can do the voice of Carl (somewhat gruff, middle-deep voice of an ex-coast guard guy) and Donut (a high-pitched hoity-toity British female voice) seamlessly, along with so so many more characters who have all manner of accents, come from different races (i.e. aliens, not just ethnicities), and with different attitudes, personalities, etc. You will not believe that it’s one person doing all the voices, but apparently it is. So good.

For the first half of this book, we follow a somewhat basic sequence of semi-random encounters which Carl and Donut fight their way out of. There was a creepy, deadly circus with a monster at its core that needed to be defeated. This felt like an episode of some weekly TV series (which is not in itself bad, but I found that the story was becoming a bit homogenous and repetitive). I wasn’t finding any specific events or details very memorable. Still fun, but forgettable fun. 

Also, as you know if you’ve ever played an RPG video game, there can be a lot of side-characters or character encounters over the course of the game and it’s challenging to remember insignificant randos along the way. Plus, it’s hard to know who comes back later. That’s surprisingly one of the problems with Dungeon Crawler Carl series so far. Because I read the first book so long ago, I had forgotten many of the characters, events, etc. Many of the cross-references made now went over my head. At the time, I didn’t know their significance so I didn’t know to try to remember them for future revisit. I probably missed a lot of the references that this book made back to the previous one.

By the second half, there was a bit of a change. The routine way that encounters had played out before evolved into a more complicated series of quests. Though the rules of the quests end up feeling somewhat arbitrary, I could now start to see them as fitting into a broader picture (after all, this universe is wide enough to contains many many planets, factions, and other aspects to the game — including talk shows and other media events) that function in the background. In making the quests/plots more elaborate, the story also felt like it expanded and became more meaningful, part of a larger narrative to come. Once I felt we were not just following Carl and Donut on random, arbitrary encounters, I felt like we were reading a story with an arc. (Apologies that I’m trying to stay spoiler-free, so I’m not helping with specifics too much.)

Lastly, there are quite a few moments where Carl expressed his affection for Donut, and how much she’s grown up. This volume has deepened the family flavour of their relationship and I find myself caring about our two protagonists a lot more because of this. Some people prefer the first book (maybe it’s because it set up everything about these stories and the protagonists) but I feel like this series is showing how it can be more than just a silly adventure story. Like it’s own players, the story is levelling up. I definitely look forward to picking up the next volume to see what is in store for Carl and Donut.

4 stars

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