I flew through the first 1/3 of the novel because I love the video game RPG genre and this was my first experience reading about how LitRPG turns them into a linear adventure. But my opinion changed when I read two scenes that came quite close together.
Now, for the next three or four paragraphs, there are spoilers: Carl, up to this point, has been killing non-human characters to survive; it’s been very much attack-or-die. As a reader, I haven’t really expected him to have been deeply reflecting on the horror of the situation
But there were two scenes where Carl wasn’t immediately attacked and had a chance to interact rather than react to the ‘baddies’.
*** There are spoilers in the next two paragraphs ***
In one, a mutated human speaks Spanish, which shows his opponent is scared and confused. Carl doesn’t understand Spanish, and a translation isn’t provided to the reader. But he still acts with violence, despite the doubts he expresses about facing an almost-human character.
Matt doesn’t pause the action here; Carl moves on. He meets a group of goblins who don’t kill him on sight because they recognise his tattoo, which he received as a ‘bonus’ for killing another goblin group earlier. He doesn’t explain this. Instead, he uses it to gain access to their inner sanctum. They treat him with kindness, and he repays that by carrying out a mass killing.
I thought that it would set the tone for the rest of the book – kill indiscriminately, get loot, and level up.
But without the author exploring the emotional impact, it felt like it would be reductive and ultimately a hollow experience. I need to at least feel there is a point to the story, even if it makes me feel uncomfortable.
And when I reached this thought earlier last week, I closed the book, fully intending to DNF it.
I shared my disappointment on Bluesky, hoping someone would tell me I was wrong.
Ummm, at 1/3 in, I’m not sure that I like Carl or the cat in Dungeon Crawler Carl.
And I’m grateful to Somhairle Kelly for situating Dungeon Crawler Carl within the system-apocalypse microgenre.
The thing that hit me from the thread was:
Some are grimdark for the sake of grimdark. Characters often lament never getting planes, the internet, mobile phones, etc. again, but they don’t contemplate the sheer horror.
It made me wonder if my reaction was the problem. Carl wasn’t supposed to care, and that was intentional and an expected trope because the genre as a whole focuses on the macro rather than the individual’s emotional impact.
I’ve previously said, way back in 2023, in the context of The Poppy War Trilogy:
I don’t plan on going back to grimdark consciously, at least not for a while, unless I read a series that is grimdark but I don’t realise it is.
And it seemed that reading Matt or the Clarke Award had ‘fooled’ me into reading it.
But both Somhairle’s framing and the fact that it’s up for a Clarke Award have me intrigued. I’m wondering if I can continue, knowing this will be the pattern from here on out.
The replies in the thread imply that Carl doesn’t suddenly become empathetic as the series goes on. Growth may kick in about book 4 or 5.
And the creator has said that it’s not what it first seems:
Every war, every social movement has multiple battlefields, and not every battlefield has to be the front line. I want people with different points of view to enjoy these books at face value. If I then manage to drill through their thick skulls and make them think about the broader themes and maybe grow an empathetic spark, all the better.
The above is a larger extract from a Reddit post, ‘We are not talking current event politics here, and every deliberately political post will be deleted. Repeat violators will be banned. This is why’
So, maybe I am having the reaction that the author is expecting. I went out of my way to translate the Spanish dialogue in that first scene, and I think that’s perhaps what led me to project a negative association between Carl and his creator.
I think the problem is that I don’t feel that I need the lesson.
Killing anything should come with awareness.
And I wonder if my curiosity would drive me to read through my own discomfort and dissociation, to complete my reading of the rest of the books. Given that I can’t even force myself to read the next book in the series that I LOVE, I highly doubt it.
By the way, I love how the RPG elements are integrated; it’s just the lack of empathy for the ‘Non-Playable Characters’ even if that makes readers think about the choices that Carl is and isn’t making.
And because of Kelly’s framing, I do want to go back to DCC with both the author’s intent and the type of genre it is.
I now want to read The Transcendent Green by Mati Ocha (https://matiocha.com) as it was recommended by Somhairle Kelly, as they described it as ‘respectful, authentically Gaelic, and depicts the horrors without callousness or apocalypse porn. And fundamentally hopepunk‘
I understand what DCC is trying to do, and I don’t think finishing it will change that—but maybe I’ll come to like it. Should I continue, or is this just not for me?
Gav Reads 