#63 in Fantasy
Dungeon Crawler Carl
- 466
- Pages
- about 9 h
- Reading time
- NYT bestseller · 40 weeks on the list, peaked at #4
Affiliate link: buying through it supports BookRank at no extra cost to you.
Our view
The end of the world as a televised dungeon crawl, with a man and his ex-girlfriend’s cat at its centre: the premise is loud, dark and funny. It is also told like a video game, with spell statistics, loot descriptions and achievement notices constantly interrupting the action. Readers who enjoy game mechanics on the page will be delighted; those who do not, or dislike crude humour and gleeful violence, should look elsewhere.
Worth knowing Matt Dinniman first posted it as a web serial on Royal Road in 2020 and self-published it the same year; the audiobook read by Jeff Hays turned it into a word-of-mouth hit, and Ace reissued the series in print in 2024. It is LitRPG: the story runs on game rules, with stat screens and loot boxes, and it is far funnier than its premise suggests. The eighth book, A Parade of Horribles (2026), is among the best-rated new releases on this site.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
The apocalypse will be televised! A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth--from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds--collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have 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 followers, your views. Your clout. 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.
Reading order · Dungeon Crawler Carl
Full order & progress →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.7 across 3,741 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 96% of the weight and the score stays at 8.7 — the Fantasy average of 8.0 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 9.3 | 12 | 0% |
| Hardcover | 8.7 | 3.7K | 100% |
Frequently asked
How long is Dungeon Crawler Carl?
It has 466 pages — shorter than 61% of the ranked books in Fantasy.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Fantasy — with scores between 8.6 and 8.7, closest to this book.
