In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth--from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds to all the trucks and cars--collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta …
It's the most-watched game show in the galaxy!
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth--from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds to all the trucks and cars--collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside, they've all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.
Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your views and your followers. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game, with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.
Marine tech Carl, along with the cat, gets isekai’ed into a “Running Man”esque nightmare of a dungeon crawl.
I was dubious at the start, but it grew on me as I progressed through the book and was a light, enjoyable read. The characters are not interchangeable Emmas, the writing is fine, and often actually amusing when it tries to be funny. This is definitely a book for people who enjoy gaming, TTRPGs, or LitRPGs, I’d not recommend this series to anyone unfamiliar with any of those things. I’ll be reading more of these.
I forgot where I stumbled upon this book, but I gave it away as a present and the guy read it recently and was full of praise. So I read it, too, and can tell you: wow! Easy to read, funny, and page-turning by itself.
Aliens come to Earth and, reminding us of the Volorians from Douglas Adams, present legal claim to all of Earth, which we humans could have avoided by making or own claim before a court we never existed.
Very shortly after most humans are dead and all the rest is offered to fight through a dungeon. Whoever makes it to level 18 can reclaim Earth.
And so we go down with Carl and his cat into the dungeon. Turns out, Carl is the first to bring a pet cat into the dungeon, so they get a buff and thus, Princess Donut is a Dungeon Crawler just …
I forgot where I stumbled upon this book, but I gave it away as a present and the guy read it recently and was full of praise. So I read it, too, and can tell you: wow! Easy to read, funny, and page-turning by itself.
Aliens come to Earth and, reminding us of the Volorians from Douglas Adams, present legal claim to all of Earth, which we humans could have avoided by making or own claim before a court we never existed.
Very shortly after most humans are dead and all the rest is offered to fight through a dungeon. Whoever makes it to level 18 can reclaim Earth.
And so we go down with Carl and his cat into the dungeon. Turns out, Carl is the first to bring a pet cat into the dungeon, so they get a buff and thus, Princess Donut is a Dungeon Crawler just like Carl himself. A former show cat, she is now bent on becoming famous, for the dungeon crawl is watched on universal TV around the, well, the universe.
Sure. The story is a bit repetitive, but has anyone of you ever played Elden Ring or the like? Of course they are repetitive! Yet the story is fun as hell, it is interesting to see how Carl and Donut do, and the game messages are fun as well.
I went ahead and ordered book 2 and 3 of this series, because at the end of the first book, Carl and Princess Donut made it to the 3rd level (race and profession can be choosen) and did I mention it's 18 levels overall?
This book had no business being as much fun as it was. Even though I had seen it recommended by friends, I went in skeptical, but was sucked in right away. It's by no means high literature, but Carl and Princess Donut's escapades are a delight. What this book lacks in substance it makes up with pure candy-coated silliness. This was the perfect weekend read.
Admittedly, I am solidly in the target demographic, being an avid TTRPG player, and there was plenty of fan service along those lines. Added pluses for some nose tweaking to the manosphere as well. On the surface, this could have come across as a different take on Ready Player One, but this one didn't leave the same bad taste in my mouth.
There's a lot of world building going on in this first book, with many hints of darkness to come, and without spoilers I …
This book had no business being as much fun as it was. Even though I had seen it recommended by friends, I went in skeptical, but was sucked in right away. It's by no means high literature, but Carl and Princess Donut's escapades are a delight. What this book lacks in substance it makes up with pure candy-coated silliness. This was the perfect weekend read.
Admittedly, I am solidly in the target demographic, being an avid TTRPG player, and there was plenty of fan service along those lines. Added pluses for some nose tweaking to the manosphere as well. On the surface, this could have come across as a different take on Ready Player One, but this one didn't leave the same bad taste in my mouth.
There's a lot of world building going on in this first book, with many hints of darkness to come, and without spoilers I can say the ending is kind of abrupt and odd. So I'm taking this down a star. I'll have to see how I feel about the second one plays out and ends to really understand if I like it as a series, but on the whole I found this first entry delightful.
I devoured this book while expecting to hate it. It's silly. It's dumb, and goddamnit Donut, it is exceedingly fun to read.
I'm not even sure how to define it without ruining some of the fun, but it's a massive love letter to video games and online culture, and it's probably for the best that you know as little as possible going in. If you read and enjoyed Ready Player One, I think you may enjoy it too.
Sometimes when I want to be particularly disparaging of something I've read I'll say something like, "this wasn't so much a book as much as it was a literary product designed to make the author money." I'm not even going that far this time; this was a thing. This was a sorry collection of words that I had the misfortune of having to read for a book club pick. 'If you hated it so much, why not DNF it?' I hear you ask. Because I know the only thing worse than a hater is an uninformed hater, so I steeled myself and dove right into this cesspit not quite certain if I'd make it to the other side. I did, and I'm not better for it.
This book is bad. The "humor" is forced and unsuccessful, the protagonist resists developing motives or emotions, and the reader is forced to wade …
Sometimes when I want to be particularly disparaging of something I've read I'll say something like, "this wasn't so much a book as much as it was a literary product designed to make the author money." I'm not even going that far this time; this was a thing. This was a sorry collection of words that I had the misfortune of having to read for a book club pick. 'If you hated it so much, why not DNF it?' I hear you ask. Because I know the only thing worse than a hater is an uninformed hater, so I steeled myself and dove right into this cesspit not quite certain if I'd make it to the other side. I did, and I'm not better for it.
This book is bad. The "humor" is forced and unsuccessful, the protagonist resists developing motives or emotions, and the reader is forced to wade through a genuinely shocking amount of tedious item descriptions and pop-up notifications. And this isn't coming from a stick-in-the-mud who hates fun; I've grown up playing RPGs like any self-respecting red-blooded millennial, both in video games and at tabletops. But nothing about inventory management or speccing into subclasses translates well to a text-based medium where the audience has no agency or ability to interact with the source material. I don't like being told, "you're having fun now," by someone I can't respond to. And apparently 'litRPG' is an entire genre of other books like this? The appeal escapes me.
There are (very) brief glimpses of themes that threaten to become interesting in between the seemingly obligatory action scenes that occur because they have to. I thought we'd get some commentary on how citizens of an imperial core can view violence and struggles in far-off colonized lands as passive entertainment rather than the tragedy it is, but any time we skirt too close to approaching anything that might be considered vulnerable we have to ruin the moment with some slapstick bullshit.
And you're telling me that there are EIGHT of these books? I wish the author had developed a crippling masturbation addiction instead because the end result would've been the same and we'd all be spared this nonsense.
I'm not sure how this series passed me by. A friend recommended it as "pretty fun" - it definitely pushes a lot of my buttons.
It also helps that Princess Donut is a great character (and a cat).
If you enjoyed the dungeon / adventure parts of Ready Player One, this book is that on steroids. Achievements, social media, megacorps, classes, D&D abilities, loot, and way more.
I will say that this book is mostly world building and doesn't progress a real storyline particularly far. I've withheld a star for that - hopefully the rest of the series delivers an engaging plot. If they end up being this book repeated I think I would lose interest quickly.
The audio adaptation has had a load of effort put into it, and even though certain bits (game text, achievement popups) can be a bit repetitive, it really worked.
This is my first time reading/listening to a "GameLit". Audiobook voices and everything is really top notch!! You can definitely hear the characters and I am so invested in the story, world and their crawl! Great world building. I was first thrown off with Carl's voice because I could not imagine a 27 year old speaking that deeply. However, its a great voice and I really got used to it. I now have all the books so far on audiobook.
Başlangıçta çok boş beleş bir kitapmış gibi gelmişti ama yer yer gösterdiği "enteresan girişim"ler beni okumaya devam etmeye itti. Nihayetine erdiğimdeyse tüm seriyi bitirmeye karar vermiştim.
LitRPG türünden olması dolayısıyla içine girdiğimiz oyunun mekaniklerini tüm kitap boyunca anlatıyor. Ama başlardaki o ağır ağır, her bir adımı Bilal'e anlatır gibi anlatmasından dolayı biraz sıkılmadım desem yalan olur. "Hadi geç bunları, biliyoruz zaten" dedim bolca. Ama, aralara serpiştirilmiş minik tekinsizlikler için temel oluşturuyormuş meğersem.
Kitap anlamlı tespitler yapıp kaliteli eleştiriler getirmekten de geri durmuyor. Eğlenceli, öğretici.
