Dungeon Crawler Carl and a little horror

I started reading Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman for the humor and light hearted fantasy, or so I thought. Yes, I’m going to blog about the book, but it is spoiler free, so no worries if you haven’t finished reading the book, or you want to read it later. My daughter got the book for me for Mother’s Day. She had just started reading it and was enjoying it so much she wanted to share it with me. The plan was to read it together, but then we got to one of the first boss fight. No spoilers, I promise but my daughter and I had the same issues with it. Now the book does start with the destruction of Earth. That’s not a spoiler; it is really how the book begins from the first sentence. That was a pretty big clue that it’s a dystopian novel, but you have Princess Donut, the cat who very quickly gains the ability to talk thanks to a magic tiara. (Okay that’s a small spoiler by a few pages) Carl ends up in the dungeon with no shoes, wearing boxers, because he had to run out of his apartment in the middle of the night trying to catch the very indoor cat that had found an open window. Again, not a spoiler because all that is very succinctly stated in the first two pages of the book. Those first few pages have some terrible things happening but it’s like a cozy mystery where no matter how many bodies fall out of the closet we’re all still having a wonderful time. Until the first boss fight.

Bear in mind that Donut is still a cat with the moral compass of, well, a cat. She isn’t bothered by certain things that did bother Carl, but by the time he realizes the miscommunication it’s too late. Carl says his catch phrase of, “Goddamnit, Donut!” but the phrase that made us smile earlier isn’t funny in that moment. 

The book goes back to feeling like a light fantasy, but neither my daughter nor I trusted it now. She actually stopped reading at that point, but I kept going.We started reading the book the way you’d free climb a mountain. One of us pounding in the metal piton, threading the rope, making it secure and telling each other, “It’s safe to come up this far.”

My husband, Jon had read the book weeks ago and never mentioned it because he didn’t want to prejudice us against certain scenes in the book. Maybe they wouldn’t bother us, only when we both complained did he talk about how much it had bothered him, too. We really appreciated him not oversharing, but a little warning would have been nice.

I pushed onward in the book, then got stuck at chapter 33 for days, because of the boss fight before it. I sat on the proverbial mountain unable to get past the body horror and piteousness of the scene. Carl even thinks in his head, he was glad he didn’t speak Spanish because he didn’t want to know what the “boss” was saying. Well, I read Spanish better than you speak it, Carl! I think I actually yelled that out loud at the page as if Carl could hear me. The scene was horrific and emotional painful to read, because Dinniman is a good writer. In a few short sentences he introduced a brand-new character, made us care about them and then did a clever and devastating version of Stephen King’s quote, “I try to create sympathy for my characters, then turn the monsters loose.” (I can’t explain how that quote is both absolutely accurate and doesn’t explain enough without it being a spoiler.)

Dinniman has done what the best science fiction does. He’s taken his original idea and then thought, if that really happened, then what? He follows itlogically, relentlessly. It’s really great world building. It’s also wonderfully ridiculous comic fantasy. There are moments that made me think about Terry Prachett’s Disc World, except that the absurd humor was balanced by psychological horror and body horror that Prachettnever served up, and I’m good with that. Our whole family loves Disc World. 

The vote is split on Dungeon Crawler Carl. Jon finished it and isn’t going to read the next book. Our daughter is debating whether to maybe not finish even the first book because of “emotional damage.” Read that in the appropriate tone and with the appropriate music. I finished reading the book this morning, and I would say something about the ending, but what I want to say would absolutely be a spoiler. I will say only this: I will be picking up the next book, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario. I’ll pay Dinniman the best compliment I can to another writer; I want to find out what happens next.