For the first time in a while, I’m fully caught up on a book series! Over the past few months, I’ve been reading through the entirety of the currently-released Dungeon Crawler Carl books, which is the first eight entries in the series as of the time of writing this post. I’m finally all caught up, which means it’s time for a ranking! I really enjoyed almost all of these books, so this wasn’t an easy list to put together. Still, I wanted to discuss some of the best and worst moments this series has had to offer so far.
This list will have some spoilers for the series because I really want to discuss what did and didn’t work for me in each entry without worrying about being super vague. So, if you’ve never read the Dungeon Crawler Carl books before, go read them and come back here later! I promise, you’re not going to regret it.
Anyways, on with the list!
8. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride
This is the only entry in Dungeon Crawler Carl that I am more on the side of disliking, so it was an easy pick for the bottom of the list. On some level, The Eye of the Bedlam Bride had issues outside of its control that it was already fighting against. It’s sandwiched between two of the most pivotal books in the franchise so far, which means readers were starting the book having just finished the avalanche that is floor six’s events, and the end of the book is preparing for the much-anticipated floor nine. Bedlam Bride felt like it was set up for failure from the beginning.
While I generally think Dinniman does a good job of keeping even the “filler” floors interesting (basically any floor that isn’t a multiple of three), this one fell flat for me. Most of the story felt like true filler. It is, by far, the book of the series that I felt pushed the overarching narrative forward the least. There are some good character moments with the arc surrounding Carl’s dad, Carl finally getting the closure on his relationship with Bea that still felt like it was left hanging even after Donut got her closure, and the emotional encounter with Ren were all major highlights that stick out in my mind. Those moments still only accounted for roughly a few hundred pages of this massive behemoth of a book, though, and the rest was basically just the dungeon floor gimmick stretched to its thinnest.
Floor gimmicks are probably one of the main things that will determine every fan’s book rankings because they’re so personal to the kinds of games we all play. For me, I hate card games. I don’t have the patience for the rule set and I find them unreasonably dull. I’d much rather just go play a traditional RPG. Since this whole book was centered around a card game mechanic, I knew this was going to be a slog. I still probably would have liked this book more if it was paced better, but unfortunately, this one didn’t really work for me on any level and I was really happy to get to the end so I could move on to book seven.
7. The Gate of the Feral Gods
The Gate of the Feral Gods was the first entry where I was worried that the series may eventually overstay its welcome. This is because, similarly to Bedlam Bride, I did not enjoy the floor gimmick. The bubble worlds weren’t enjoyable and after all of the teamwork we got to see in book three, I was disappointed that the first third of this book had Carl and Donut isolated to a small group of crawlers that we didn’t know very well yet.
Thankfully, after the…explosive…encounter with Loita, the book picked up the pace a lot and my fears of the series not being for me turned out to be unfounded. The last two-thirds of this book is basically a massive ramp-up towards the events on the sixth floor and it was absolutely amazing to watch unfold. Even in the first third, while I had my issues with the pacing and mechanics involved, we were introduced to a number of characters in this book that went on to become pivotal over the course of the series, like Louis and Samantha. It’s near the bottom of my list because I thought it was a bit of a chore to read, but overall, most of the pages didn’t feel wasted compared to the bottom entry.
6. Carl’s Doomsday Scenario
Book two of the series, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario, is probably the weirdest book of the series for me because I don’t believe it should exist. More specifically, it should have been a “part two” of the first book instead of its own story. Since it was split off into its own story, however, that puts it in a weird position.
Doomsday Scenario feels like it is all setup with no execution, which is why it’s an odd book as a standalone entity. So much of this book is crucial for the series to come, like the introduction of Signet, the quest system, and meeting Katia. Yet at the same time, most of the plot points this book spends time on don’t really get any resolution here. Signet is awesome, but the bulk of the story there is part of Butcher’s Masquerade. We meet Katia, but the bulk of her initial character arc doesn’t occur until Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook.
This is the problem with Doomsday Scenario. It’s a great book, but it feels incomplete on its own. If it had been combined with the first book, then it could have at least been a singular book with all of the tutorial segments contained within. That would have felt like a more complete arc than just having this half of a tutorial contained within the shortest book in the series, in which very little actually happens that is meaningful without the context of plot arcs that come much later.
5. This Inevitable Ruin
This Inevitable Ruin finally depicts the events of one of the most hyped parts of the series so far: The infamous faction wars. As Carl likes to say, many things are happening at once. The NPCs are continuing to break free of their programming, the AI is continuing to lose its mind, Katia and Donut still have to deal with the conditions of the tiara and the fact that one of them cannot proceed to the next floor, and amidst all of this, faction wars is ever-present on the main stage. It’s a great moment for the reader to finally get to see how all of these major plot points converge and resolve, while also beginning to set the stage for the final act of the series.
There is so much to love here and this is really the point where I have less criticism and my rankings are more about the amount of praise I can heap on each book comparatively. My only complaint here is that I think it still could have been a tiny bit shorter. This is the longest book of the series so far, and it mostly earns that page count, but there still were some repeated descriptions and lengthy lore dumps that probably could have been either cut or handled as part of another entry in the series. Still, Inevitable Ruin more than lived up to its lofty expectations that it set for itself.
4. Dungeon Crawler Carl
This is the book that started it all. I absolutely adore the first Dungeon Crawler Carl and I can’t say enough good things about it. Even if committing to the full series feels like too much, I highly recommend that everyone give the first book a try and see how it goes. I was certainly hesitant to pick up a book about a guy in his underwear and his talking cat fighting monsters in a dungeon because it sounded too goofy, and sometimes it really is as goofy as it sounds. Still, even within this first book, it’s easy to see the bones of what is going to become a very plot-driven and emotional series filled with beautifully-designed character arcs.
There’s not really a ton to say about this book independently, other than to simply praise the beautiful series that it started. Getting to meet Donut and Mordecai for the first time was such a treat and I knew by page fifty that I was going to have to read all of the books right in a row.
3. The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook
I’ve seen enough posts about this series to know that placing The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook so high on my list is going to be controversial. For many, this is their least favorite entry in the series so far. I am nothing if not an annoying contrarian, though, so let me make my case for why this is one of the best books in the series and we should all love trains more.
First of all, Katia is my favorite character beyond the Carl and Donut duo, and I think her arc really gets started in this book. Sure, we technically meet her in book two, but it’s not until her encounter with Hekla that she really starts to come into her own and we learn more about her personality. Additionally, speaking of Hekla, my favorite quote of the entire series is what Donut says to Hekla after she realizes that Hekla tried to kill Katia (“You tried to kill Katia, you f**king b****”). It’s such a beautiful moment of character development for Donut, and it’s hysterically funny at the same time.
Additionally, this is the first time that we really get to see Carl step into his role as a leader or even figurehead for the dungeon. There are some glimpses of it earlier in the series, like with the rage elemental in book one or the ending events of book two, but these were still on a smaller scale. This is the first time that Carl gets the dungeon to cooperate as a whole unit, and getting to experience moments of teamwork like this are why I love this series so much. I don’t think the ending events of Feral Gods, or basically the entirety of Butcher’s Masquerade or Inevitable Ruin would have happened without Carl gaining some confidence throughout the events of this book.
2. A Parade of Horribles
This is the most surprising entry of the series for me. There’s a pattern that seemed like it was beginning to emerge up to the point of A Parade of Horribles. I have a tendency to like the “execution” books of Dungeon Crawler Carl better than the “setup” books. What I mean by that is, I feel that some of the books in the series, like Doomsday Scenario, Feral Gods, and Bedlam Bride, aren’t really independent stories in themselves. They’re really setup books for the entries that come after, focused on expanding the world, introducing pivotal characters, and setting down some breadcrumbs to help get people excited for the entries like Butcher’s Masquerade and Inevitable Ruin.
Therefore, I fully expected that I was going to find A Parade of Horribles underwhelming. We had just come off the events of Inevitable Ruin and I knew that this book had to do a lot of groundwork to set up the big finale in the final plot arc. This is all true, but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it regardless. The racing gimmick was a little silly, but far more palatable than the gimmicks of Feral Gods or Bedlam Bride. Plus, the fact that the crawlers were collaborating to keep the NPCs alive in an attempt to avoid crawler-on-crawler races to the death meant that the crawler interactions that are the heart and soul of this series were consistently on full display throughout the book.
Moreover, while I was correct that there was a lot of setup to this book, it’s setup for the finale. We aren’t setting up for any of the mid-season finales anymore. This is the big bang. Everything feels like it is rapidly snowballing downhill and all of the setup being done is extra-intriguing, knowing that it’s going to be resolved within the next book or two. I found everything about the execution of the story here to be masterful.
Additionally, I have to mention the sense of humor on display. This series is funny, but over the few books before this one, I felt like the humor was being traded for the drama. That makes sense, as some very serious things happen in this series as the stakes get continuously higher, but it was still fun to get to this book and have the balance be restored. Yes, some horribly depressing things happen in this book, but there’s also a Carl and Donut karaoke duet (please listen to the audiobook for this one chapter, if nothing else). I suspect this was a calm-before-the-storm situation, as I do not expect the finale to be nearly this humorous, but it was still a welcome surprise to get the humor of the early books back for a little while.
1 The Butcher’s Masquerade
Finally, number one is none other than The Butcher’s Masquerade. This is one of my favorite books of all time now. Everything about its execution was flawless. It was long, but it earned its length. The entire book features heavy use of teamwork between the crawlers to stay alive. We get character development across the board, including for characters where it was unexpected, like Mongo. This is the first entry in the series where we get to tangibly encounter long-alluded-to crawlers like Lucia Mar and Prepotente, and we get to see a major moment of closure for Donut as she confronts Bea in one of the best moments in the series. It feels like a proper mid-series finale, wrapping up as many plot threads as possible, while still leaving lots of interesting ones dangling for later.
I cannot stress enough that this is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and I never could have predicted how much I was going to love it by randomly deciding to pick up the first entry one day. I expected to have a good time reading a funny book series, and I was not prepared for how emotionally devastating aspects of this entry were for me. This is absolutely Dinniman writing at his best, and if this is any indication, the finale to this series is going to give Butcher’s Masquerade a run for its money in terms of which entry is my favorite in this series.
Well, that’s my ranking of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. Do you agree or disagree with any of my rankings? Let me know in the comments below!
The Hannie Corner 