Since starting Dungeon Crawler Carl about a month ago, I have read nonstop until I finished the existing 8 books in the series. The author is planning two more in the next few years. They are also producing a live-action show of the content on Peacock. I have enjoyed this book series immensely.
Reading fiction again
When I was a teenager, I read many hours per day. I can not tell if I read so much because I did not have many friends or the other way around. I almost exclusively read fiction until I went to college. Then it was non-fiction (mostly history and biography) until my 30s when it became mostly books about working like design, psychology, technology, etc.
Going back to fiction has unlocked a part of me that has lain dormant for many years. Getting lost in an imaginary world is a pleasure I had long forgotten.
Book review
Spoiler: I loved Dungeon Crawler Carl. Grade: A
I had never read a LitRPG book series before so it was new to me. The premise is basically that a normal person (Carl) and his cat (Donut) are thrown out of the normal world we inhabit and are placed inside a world with different rules. (He is not alone, millions of other earthlings are thrown in there with him.) It might as well be a virtually reality, but the stakes feel real and life-threatening. This new world has magic and monsters. By surviving, you gain levels and powers of your own. This whole adventure is live-broadcast to the entire universe to make money.
Each book is usually a pattern like:
- Acclimate to new surroundings.
- Info dump, foreshadowing, clues and items that might be helpful
- All hell breaks loose, everyone is going to die
- Clever use of clues to pull of a ridiculous solution that everyone thinks is crazy, but (mostly) works
- Level up and go to new place
- Back to step 1
To make the books interesting, the author Matt Dinniman, introduces interesting characters with fleshed out back stories. He gives life to each character and space for them to breathe and grow. He does this without sacrificing pacing. I would say pacing is the best part of the series. You never feel bogged down for too long. The stakes rise appropriately with each adventure. The universe is kind of huge, but not so big that we can’t wrap our heads around it.
Additionally, there is a great sense of humor and satire within the stories. I laughed out loud many times while reading. There is great dialog and interaction between different people to make you love them, laugh with them, and also mourn when they die. The political commentary is pretty sharp, but leaves one thinking there is not a clear answer to “who is right and who is wrong”.
Still two books left, but I am very happy I read the series. So much so, that I am going to try another litRPG.
Excel for Carl
Regarding the live-broadcast, there are stats he uses to show how popular Carl has become. Views, followers, and favorites are all calculated by the inhabitants of the universe. I wondered about this while reading and wanted to put it into an excel table. I looked online and I could not find anyone who collated this data already.
One problem was that the numbers became so astronomical that I had trouble with making the formatting make any sense. Another problem was the scaling of the growth was logarithmic.
The data from the books was as follows:
As you can see, there were (by the 8th book) 933 Septillion views. That is 933 followed by 24 zeros, which is 933,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. I struggled to understand how many people existed in this universe. As a linear scale, it just looked like a hockey stick. Converting to Logarithmic scale where each row is the previous row squared gives a more understandable line. It’s still kind of nonsense because views, favorites, and followers would not be nearly this close.
To make this excel chart, I needed to display numbers using my made-up notation like “933 Sept”. The custom formatting formula looks like this:
I used some AI to help me figure out the right formatting and for inputting the numbers without having to count 24 zeroes. (Example: 9.33E+26)
Making this chart is exactly the kind of thing that work would not allow me time to do. I enjoyed making it and make it available.
When the other books (and the show on Peacock) are released, I will excited to experience it. Great series.
Whatya think?