When the guy in boxer shorts and his talking cat threw a bomb to blow up a bunch of goblins as aliens from all across the galaxy watched, I was instantly hooked. That’s just one of many wild moments in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series by author Matt Dinniman. First published in 2020, it’s gone on to become a massive literary hit with eight books (and counting), and while it admittedly took me a while to get here, I am now totally obsessed.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is the story of a man named Carl who is on a dungeon crawl. Obviously. Carl is only in that situation, though, because he happened to be outside his apartment when aliens crushed every single structure on Earth simultaneously, killing the majority of humans on the planet. He and everyone else who lived through the destruction were invited to either try to survive on the surface or participate in a game where you go underground and fight for your life through 18 levels of deadly dungeons, which is broadcast to creatures all over the cosmos.

That’s the very, very basic setup of the series, and it sucks you in from the start. You have so many questions, like: how is this possible? What is possible? Who did this? What did this? And can Carl make it to the end? He’s joined by Princess Donut, his ex-girlfriend’s trophy cat who, thanks to the powers of the dungeon, becomes not just sentient, but a fellow participant in the game.

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